


like calls to like

by godmarked



Category: Carrie - Stephen King, Doctor Sleep (2019), Heathers (1988), IT (Movies - Muschietti), Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon Gay Character, Canon Typical Swearing, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Familial Abuse, Female Friendship, Fix-It, Multi, Multiple Crossovers, Psychic Abilities, The Losers Club (IT) Love Each Other, mild gore mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-01-05 14:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godmarked/pseuds/godmarked
Summary: Beverly Marsh leaves Derry, moves to New York, and forgets. When she meets Carrie White, she starts to remember.(like calls to like. anomalies tend to stick together.)





	1. 1990 - 1999

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [walk me home in the dead of night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20951681) by [QueenWithABeeThrone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone). 

**1990**

When Bev is fifteen, and she’s offered a choice. Her aunt is leaving Derry, and if she wants, she can go with. It’s barely even a choice, in the end. 

The Losers are distraught to lose her, and the day before she’s due to leave with her aunt to go live in Portland, of all places, they go down to the quarry and spend hours swimming around together, doing chicken fights and dunking each other. They dry off on the ground, stretched out in the sun, one of Bev’s hands tucked into Bill’s and the other wrapped loosely around Richie’s ankle. A solemn sort of quiet comes over them all, at losing one of the Losers, someone who went through the hell of that summer with them. 

“I’ll write,” Bev promises, and Bill squeezes her hand. “As often as possible, and maybe you could come and visit me!” 

“In _Portland__? _” Richie asks, and Bev pinches him. It makes him squeal, and then he whines to Eddie about how he’s dying, and the tension breaks. They laugh and when it gets dark, they all walk her home. 

Bill kisses her cheek. Richie picks her up and swings her around in a circle, and she shrieks with laughter and swats at his shoulders until he puts her down. Everyone else hugs her, one by one, and when it gets to Ben they hold each other so tightly Bev thinks, for a moment, that she’ll never let go. But they both do, and she wipes the tears off of her face and offers them her biggest smile. 

“I love you all,” she says, and it sounds like a promise. “So, so much. Losers club forever, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” everyone echoes, and then it’s time for her to go inside. She can’t help but look over her shoulder at all of them standing on the pavement. She can’t help but think that something fundamental is going to change, now. 

She leaves early the next day, and most of the Losers are asleep, but when she drags her suitcase outside, Ben is sitting on the pavement waiting. He rushes up to help her with her bag, beaming the whole time. “What are you doing here? It’s so early!” she cries, but he just keeps smiling. 

“I couldn’t let you go without seeing you off,” he blushes, and Bev feels light all the way to her fingertips. 

“You’re not losing me forever, New Kid,” she promises, and their hands overlap while they drag the suitcase together. She glances over her shoulder, and when she’s sure her aunt is up in the apartment, she leans in to whisper in his ear. “It’s kind of hard to forget the kids you fought a killer clown with, right?” 

He laughs, and blushes more, and Bev grins. “Right,” he replies. “But still, I didn’t want you to be lonely when you left.” 

“Thanks, Ben,” she says softly. He helps her load her suitcase into her aunt’s car, and then when she has to go, she hugs him again. “I’ll write as soon as I can.” 

“I can’t wait,” he replies, grinning as bright as the sun. When they drive away, Ben runs next to the car for as long as he can, and then waves at her as she goes, big movements with both arms swinging over his head. 

As she watches him get smaller and smaller in the distance, Bev loves him so much that her heart hurts. She’s going to miss all of them so much. She hopes that this isn’t the last time she sees them. 

**1995**

“Hey, Beverly, are you coming or _ what? _” one of Bev’s friends yells over her shoulder. Bev’s stuck frozen in front of the student notice board, and she waves her friend off absentmindedly. 

_ CHILDHOOD ABUSE SURVIVORS GROUP THERAPY, _the poster reads, and then there’s a lot of text about what the meeting is for and the time and place. Bev doesn’t think about her dad very often, but she flinches when she hears frat boys yelling and her friends call her a space cadet for how often she zones out. She bites her lip, and then hastily scribbles down the time and place on her arm, tugging a sleeve over it before jogging to catch up with her friends. 

She agonizes over it at home, writing the information onto a sticky note and alternating between pacing in front of it and just sitting on her bed and staring. She doesn’t feel like she _ needs _ therapy, is the thing. So what if she spaces out on occasion and doesn’t like it when people yell? You’d be hard pressed to find someone who _ did _ like it when drunk frat boys started hollering. It’s not like Bev is super fucked up about the whole thing, she left her aunt in Portland when she turned eighteen and now she barely even _ thinks _ about her family. Whenever she does, it’s hazy, and she finds it’s easier to forget about them entirely when she can. 

...Which is probably a pretty clear sign that she needs therapy, Jesus Christ. _ Fuck _. 

So on Friday night, she gets dressed in a pair of jeans that have paint on the cuffs from a friend’s art project, and a sweater that’s striped bright pink and yellow, a size too big, and clashes with her hair in a way that she kind of loves. They’re comfortable clothes, not fashionable clothes, but it’s not like she needs to look nice if she’s going to _ group therapy _, of all things. She gets to the community center where it’s being held five minutes early, and she helps herself to a cup of black coffee and claims a plastic chair in the big circle of them. There’s a few other people here, but the one who stands out the most is a short, chubby blonde woman with shadows under her eyes and nails bitten down to the quick. Beverly isn’t sure what about her makes her stand out so much, or if it’s just some pull of like calling to like, but she can barely tear her eyes away from the other woman. 

Eventually, more and more people fill in. There’s a lot of young women, but there’s the occasional man and a few older-looking people. Everyone here has the same tired look in their eyes, even the ones who strive to be upbeat and hopeful about it. _ Do I look like that? _ Bev wonders, bringing a hand up to touch her face. _ Have I always looked like that? _

The meeting is kind of a blur. Some people talk, and there’s a lead counsellor lady who says a lot of encouraging and positive words, and then it’s over. People mill around, chatting, drinking coffee and eating kind-of-stale cookies from the snack table, and Beverly’s skin is crawling. Even being here is an admission of what happened to her, that her father was the way he was, that she is not always upbeat-happy Bev Marsh who makes her own clothes and wants to be a bigshot fashion designer. It’s awful, a strangling sort of sensation, the feeling that everyone _ knows _ , they _ know _ and she can’t do anything about it-

“Hey,” a soft voice says. “Are you okay?” 

Bev flinches, eyes wide as she whips her head up to look at the owner of the voice. It’s the blonde woman with the bitten nails, whose lips are parted in soft surprise as she looks at Bev. “What?” 

Blondie clears her throat. “Are you okay?” She repeats. “You’ve never been here before, and my first time- I had a panic attack, the first time I came. I was worried,” she explains. 

“Right,” Bev replies, blinking. “I’m, um. I’m okay. Thank you.” 

The woman looks relieved. “Good,” she says, and she smiles. It’s a soft, shy thing, her lips barely turning up at the corners, but it’s delightfully warm all the same. “I’m Carrie, by the way. Carrie White. Welcome to the club.” 

“Beverly Marsh. Glad to be here,” she jokes, and then pauses. “Or, actually, kind of horrified to be here. Same difference really.” 

Carrie’s grin widens, just barely, but it does. “It’s a horrifying kind of club,” she agrees. “It’s okay if you’re overwhelmed, though.” She glances over her shoulder, and there’s another blonde woman- this one tall and thin and tanned -is standing in the doorway, looking at them. When Carrie looks back over at her, the woman smiles and half-lifts a hand in greeting. “That’s Sue,” Carrie explains. “She’s, my- my person. We’re gonna go get a drink, did you want to come?” 

Bev grins. “I won’t be intruding?” 

Carrie’s smile grows again, just a little bit. “No,” she says. “I think I’d like to get to know you more, Beverly Marsh.” 

And Beverly really can’t explain it, but she wants to get to know Carrie, as well. There’s a pull in her chest, like someone’s tied a string around one of her ribs and the other is tied to Carrie. _ Like calls to like _, she thinks, because there is something that the two of them share. Maybe it’s just because they’re both here, at this group. Maybe there’s something more, something deeper. Strings tied pretty around ribs. Brains buzzing on the same wavelength. 

“Then sure, Carrie White,” Bev grins. “I’d love to get a drink.” 

They go to a bar that’s secluded and sit in a booth, and Carrie drinks a rum and coke and Sue drinks water and Bev gets a beer. Bev finds out that it’s less Carrie and Sue and more _ CarrieandSue _, and they’ve known each other since they were in high school. Carrie and Sue are both older than her by a couple of years, both of them are 26 while Bev’s still 20. All three of them are from shitty, small-town Maine, although it takes Bev a hot minute to remember the name of her town. “Derry,” she says. “Jesus, I haven’t thought about Derry in years.” 

“I’ll drink to that,” Sue says, lifting her glass of water. “I actively try _ not _ to think about Chamberlain.” 

The name of the town scratches an itch at the back of Bev’s mind, but she brushes it to the side. “Isn’t it easy?” she asks. “Just… not thinking about all that shit? I mean, Jesus, I hardly remember anything from when I was a kid.” 

“I remember too much,” Carrie mumbles, a little bitterly. Beverly doesn’t miss how Sue reaches over and takes Carrie’s hand at that, and it makes Bev feel soft as she brings her beer to her lips again.

“You two are cute together,” she says, and Carrie’s breath hitches. Sue’s posture tenses, and then relaxes, and she smiles at Bev across the table, straight white teeth shining in the dim light of the bar. 

There’s something vicious and defensive in Sue’s face, and Beverly has seen looks like that before- good women, protective of other good women. It doesn’t scare her, no, it does the opposite. It’s reassuring that she cares this much, that she cares about Carrie in such a fiercely dedicated way. No, what scares Bev is the look in Carrie’s eyes. Carrie still looks so small and soft, blonde hair framing her face, big brown doe eyes trained firmly on Beverly. There’s something dark lingering in her expression, something ancient and primal and protective that sends a shiver down Bev’s spine. “We are a cute couple,” Sue says, perfectly pleasant, rubbing her thumb against Carrie’s hand. 

The lights flicker, more than a little ominously, and under the table, unseen to Bev, Sue kicks Carrie’s ankle. Neither of their expressions change. 

Later, when they’re leaving the bar, Carrie walks ahead of them and Sue hangs back to talk to Bev. “Thanks for being so chill,” she laughs, and it’s a prom-queen laugh, pretty and perfect and kind. “I know Carrie and I can be kind of overprotective of each other.” 

Bev smiles, tilting her head. “Your heart burns for her,” she says, and in the back of her mind, something _ aches _ for a split second before she comes back to herself. “It’s nice to see.” 

“Poetic,” Sue comments. “You know, I think Carrie was right about you, Bev. I think you _ are _ interesting.” 

_ She’s one to talk _, Bev thinks. And then, out loud: “Do you want to exchange emails?” 

They do. Carrie and Sue apparently live in the opposite direction from Bev, so they pile into a cab and Beverly starts walking. She only had two drinks, and the night air is cool and brisk against her skin, and it gives her time to _ think _ . It’s decidedly not normal to have to think so hard about where you grew up, she knows, but it’s like trying to chase the last bit of salsa onto a chip- she can’t seem to get the information right, no matter how hard she tries. She lived in Derry, and her father was- _ bad _, to say the least- and she left to move to Portland in 1990, and then to New York in 1993. 

She must have had friends in Derry, though. She _ knows _ that she did. It’s like one of those optical illusions you can only see out of the corner of your eye, it vanishes the second she tries to focus on it. It’s maddening, only remembering glimpses- warm sunlight on her skin, jumping from somewhere high into water, the sound of laughter. And a poem, the same one she almost-quoted at Sue- _ Your hair burns winter fire, january embers, my heart burns there too. _ It’s a lovely, soft poem, and it makes Bev yearn in a way she’s totally unfamiliar with, this terrible longing ache that settles in her heart when she thinks the words. 

It makes her smile, though, when she sees herself in the mirror as she brushes her teeth. Her hair is bright against the pale white of her skin and the boring beige that her bathroom is painted, almost scarlet under the fluorescent lights. _ Winter fire _, she thinks, and she grins. 

It’s possible that there were good things that she left in Derry, too. 

**1997**

“I’m home!” Bev calls as she shoulders her way into the apartment, and Carrie appears from around the corner, wearing a tank top and shorts. 

“Sue’s on the phone with one of her fancy Los Angeles friends,” she confides, smiling- a proper grin, not the soft almost-smiles she used to give. She reaches out and takes one of the bags of groceries from Bev, and the shiny white scar that mars the skin just above her armpit stretches and catches the light with the motion. Carrie used to not wear tank tops around Bev, but eventually they sat down and explained about the scar. 

“Jesus,” Bev said, hand over her mouth. 

“Yeah,” Carrie had replied. “I win the shitty parent competition. Sure, all of our parents were abusive and horrible, but my mom _ stabbed _ me. How much more hardcore can you get?” 

That was almost a year ago, now, and Bev does her best not to notice the scar on the rare heated day where even a t-shirt feels like too much. It’s nice, living with them, and it’s not awkward at all like Bev had feared. Carrie makes killer pancakes, and Sue finds cleaning therapeutic, as long as it’s not all left to her. They’ve learnt to coexist around each other.

Sue is indeed on the phone in the kitchen, leaning against the doorway and smiling. “Yeah, Nancy, it’ll be so awesome to see you again,” she says warmly. “You can finally meet Carrie and Bev! And you can introduce me to your _ boys _,” she continues, a layer of suggestive teasing in her tone. Then she laughs her pretty prom-queen laugh, and says “okay, Bev is home, I gotta go. See you soon, Nance!” 

“Nancy’s coming to New York?” Bev asks curiously. She and Carrie have heard endlessly about Nancy Wheeler, the supposed angel of investigative journalism. Sue had met her at a seminar for guidance counselors that she had flown all the way to LA for; Nancy had been covering it for some small-town paper job. They were fast friends, and now they emailed and called on a weekly basis. 

“Sure is!” Sue replies, leaning over and hoisting the other paper grocery bag out of Bev’s arms. “She’s got a job interview, and one of her friends is auditioning for SNL, so they’re making a bit of a trip out of it. We’re doing dinner next Wednesday, is that okay with you two?” 

“Sounds perfect,” Carrie replies, and Bev hums her agreement as she goes back into the hall to toe her sneakers off. 

“I’ve got another interview that morning, but I’ll be done long before dinner, so that’s fine.” Bev walks back into the kitchen, sweeping her long hair into a ponytail as she goes. “Which friend is auditioning? Please tell me it’s Steve.” 

Sue giggles at the thought, carefully placing celery into the fridge. “Her comedian friend, the funny one! Rich- Richie Tozier, I think? Nance says Steve calls him _ Trashmouth _,” she says, rolling her eyes at the nickname. 

It hits Beverly like a sledgehammer to the chest, and she stumbles, gripping at the edge of the counter. “_ What? _” She wheezes, and Carrie’s already got a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Did you- did you just say Trashmouth? Richie Trashmouth Tozier?” 

Sue’s eyes are wide, knuckles white from their grip on the fridge door. “Yeah, he’s- apparently Steve met him at some bar, and they hit it off, and he annoys the shit out of Jonathan but does these _ insane _ impressions. Do you _ know _ him, Beverly?” 

She _ does _ , is the thing. She hadn’t remembered until she heard Sue say his name, but it’s Richie, how could she have forgotten Richie? Richie Tozier, who she had learnt to Lindy Hop with for the talent show, who had called her Molly Ringwald and never once had a crush on her, loud and bright and steady as a heartbeat. “Holy shit,” she says out loud, more a gasp than proper words. “I _ do _.” 

Carrie and Sue are both staring at her, and Bev’s heart is pounding in her chest, and this isn’t normal. She knows that it’s not normal to forget all about your _ best friend _until someone says their name some odd ten years later. “Carrie,” Bev says quietly, voice wavering, “I think that there might be something wrong with me.” 

And Carrie wraps her arms around Bev, and a moment later, Sue joins them. “It’s okay, Bev,” Carrie whispers. “We’ve got you.” 

Sue makes Bev a cup of tea and pours a shot of their good whiskey into it, and Bev sits sandwiched between them on their raggedy couch that they got from Goodwill. It’s dusty rose pink, and covered in patches where Beverly keeps stitching scraps of her latest projects to cover up the holes. Carrie keeps her arm around Beverly’s shoulders, and Sue puts a hand on her knee, and Beverly starts to talk. 

She tells them about the gaps in her memory, about the abuse she nearly forgot about, how remembering Richie hit her so hard, so fast, so sudden. She talks and talks and talks until there’s nothing left, like emptying a glass, the words fall like water until she’s empty inside. Carrie and Sue hold onto each other, and Beverly doesn’t miss the glance they trade across her. “I know it sounds crazy,” she says, “but I don’t- I can’t-”

“I can move things with my mind,” Carrie says, blunt and sudden. 

“What the fuck,” Bev says, blinking. “Carrie, this is not a good time to mess with me, you know that, right?” 

Carrie turns her head, and a cup floats off of the coffee table and into her hand. The lights flicker, and Beverly is reminded of that first night with them, and _ holy shit _, Carrie is psychic. That’s amazing and terrifying and a spectacular kind of awesome. “Holy shit, you’re psychic,” she says out loud, staring at the hovering glass. “Sue, did you know she was psychic?” 

Carrie rolls her eyes, and Sue swats at her absentmindedly. “I’ve known since high school,” she explains. “Senior prom, actually. Carrie went with my boyfriend. Bad things happened.” 

A lot of pieces come together in Beverly’s mind about the two of them, all at once. She had looked Chamberlain up, once, and found newspapers about what happened in the spring of 1986. One of the most catastrophic events in the history of Maine, with exploding gas stations, cut power lines, and an earthquake that had shaken buildings down. Nearly everyone who had attended the high school’s senior prom had died, save for one Carrie White, who had run from the building before it exploded. She was found covered in pig’s blood and bleeding heavily from a stab wound, and Sue Snell had brought her to the hospital later that night. 

_ Bad things happened _, Sue said. “Oh,” Beverly says. She pauses, rolling the words around in her mouth. “Why are you telling me now?”

Carrie rolls her eyes again, and Beverly pinches her side, frowning. Her friend squirms away, reaching out to grab the glass from the air and set it down with her hands. “You think you’re going crazy,” Carrie explains softly, looking down at the glass. “I did too, at first. I still do, sometimes. Sue helps, but having all of that pressure on your mind-” she cuts herself off, bringing a hand up to raise at her scar. “It takes a toll,” she says eventually. 

“I wasn’t part of what happened that night, until I found Carrie outside,” Sue adds, “and I’m definitely not telekinetic, but I _ am _one hell of a guidance counselor and I care about you both. You’re not crazy, Bev. And who knows, maybe seeing Richie in person will help.”

Beverly isn’t sure if it will, because as far as the rush of memories is convincing her, she and Richie aren’t the best candidates for _ helping _ or _ getting things done. _ But she can’t help but be excited by the thought of seeing him, something in her chest bubbling like champagne, light and happy and free. “Yeah,” she finds herself agreeing, a smile curving her lips. She still feels crazy, and things are even more complicated now than they were before, but it’s not all bad. She thinks, just maybe, the light, bubbling feeling in her chest might be _ hope _. She and Richie haven’t been able to get anything done with just the two of them in their lives, but it’s not just the two of them, anymore. “I think it will help.” 

It’s hard not to be a mess through her Wednesday interview, but she manages it well enough- it goes, and she leaves with the woman from the designer’s studio promising to call her within the week. It’s even harder not to be a wreck in the agonizing hours leading up to seeing Richie again, especially because he doesn’t know. Nancy and Sue hadn’t called at all before the entourage from LA got here, so Bev’s basically going in blind about Richie. She doesn’t know if he remembers her, or if he even wants to talk to her at all- after all, when she left, Bev never wrote. She never visited. She forgot all about them, and even if Carrie’s insistent that it’s not at all her fault, Bev can’t help the guilt that builds in her throat whenever she thinks about it. 

“He’s going to be so excited to see you, B,” Carrie tells her encouragingly. “And if he’s a dick, I’ll throw him out a window.” 

That gets a choked laugh out of Bev, and she runs her hands over her face. “You’re a good friend,” she tells the other woman. “One of the best, Carrie.” 

Carrie loops their arms together, grinning. “Don’t lie, you just want me for my psychic powers,” she replies. “You’re not fooling anyone, Marsh.”

“Oh, you’ve caught me,” Bev laughs as Sue walks out of their room, fixing her earring. “It’s that and your hot bod, completely irresistible.” 

“Hey now,” Sue warns jokingly. “That’s my girl you’re objectifying. Get your own, Bev.” She links her arm through Carrie’s on the opposite side, and the three of them set off together, out of the apartment. 

The restaurant is a Chinese place that Carrie adores and Bev likes well enough and Sue tolerates, and they’re led to this big round table with seven seats set around it. The others aren’t there, so the trio sit down and order their drinks- wine for Carrie, a beer for Bev, and water for Sue. Then it’s just a waiting game, sitting there and chatting while all three of them ignore the fact that Beverly is restlessly jiggling her leg under the table. 

“Well, look who the cat dragged in!” Sue cries suddenly, jumping to her feet. “Nancy Wheeler, journalist of the century!” 

Bev’s head snaps up to look at the group entering the restaurant, heart thudding against her ribcage. The short brunette woman leading the pack is clearly Nancy, smartly-dressed with flawlessly curled hair and wire-rimmed glasses perched on her nose. Following after her is Jonathan, who Beverly has heard enough about to pick out- slumped posture, shy smile, shaggy brown hair and a worn flannel shirt. Which leaves the two men jostling each other at the back of the line as Steve and Richie- Steve with his big hair and bigger grin, and…

Her heart actually aches when she sees Richie, a smile spreading across her face unbidden. It’s her best friend redux, tall and skinny with shaggy black curls and coke-bottle glasses that are only marginally more fashionable than the last time she saw him. He’s wearing a bright hawaiian shirt unbuttoned over a long-sleeved black shirt, dark jeans and converse sneakers that are two different colors, red and blue like 3D glasses. Their eyes meet, and he falls still, mouth dropping open as he looks at her, the rest of the world falling away. 

“Molly _ fuckin _’ Ringwald, is that you?” he asks, and the spell is broken, and Bev is pushing herself away from the table to rush towards him. He picks her up and spins her around in a little circle, arms strong around her waist, and it’s the lightest Bev has felt in years. 

“Trashmouth Tozier, in the flesh, what an honor!” she retorts when he puts her down, cupping his face with one of her hands. “God, it’s been forever!” 

He blinks behind his glasses, looking more than a little caught off guard. She knows the feeling- now that he’s _ here _ , it’s like all of her memories of him are playing back in crystal clarity. There’s still parts that are missing, or fuzzy, other people who were with them who’s faces she can’t quite picture, but now that she’s got him here, Beverly honestly can’t believe she ever forgot him in the first place. He’s _ Richie _. 

“I see you aren’t the only one with friends from the Big Apple,” Nancy comments dryly, raising an eyebrow at the two of them. “You’re the famous Bev Marsh, I assume?” 

“The one and only,” Richie answers for her, turning her around and putting his chin on the top of her head. God, he’s annoyingly tall. “Beverly Marsh, red-headed queen of the city.” 

Bev elbows him. “You haven’t changed a bit,” she informs him primly, wriggling out of his grasp. “Still as annoying as ever.” 

He clutches his chest and mock staggers, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “You wound me, m’lady,” he says in a British Voice that’s a vast improvement from the _ pip pip cheerios _ of their youth. Bev laughs, and Richie grins wider, and it’s normal and easy and endlessly familiar. 

Now that Bev’s got him, she’s never going to cut him loose again. 

**1999**

It turns out that Nancy’s little brother lives in the city with his wife. Mike and Jane are a little bit like Carrie and Sue- less separate entities, more a single unit, operating in synchronization. _ MikeandJane _ and _ CarrieandSue. _ Carrie and Janel carry themselves in the same fashion, blunt and hard-edged and unendingly careful, like a single wrong step could bring everything crashing down around them. 

Now that Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve have their own apartment, and Bev has moved out of Carrie and Sue’s place into a small two-bedroom with Richie, their lives are all that much more entwined. Mike and Jane tend to tag along with them on group outings, and Beverly can’t help but think the same thing she thought about Carrie, at that meeting. Like calls to like. There’s something similar that winds around all of them, and the pieces haven’t quite fallen into place yet, but she lays with her feet in Richie’s lap and they talk about everything they don’t remember, sometimes. 

“There were more of us,” Bev says, staring at the crack that runs along their ceiling. “I remember that much. We had a little gang, or a club, or something like that.” 

“The Losers Club,” Richie says softly, running a hand along her ankle. Bev feels warm all the way to her fingertips at the mention, the overwhelming sensation of _ rightness _. “I can’t- I can’t remember anyone else who was in it, though. Just you.” 

“Just you,” Bev echoes. But it’s not _ just him _, because she has Carrie and Sue and Nancy and Jonathan and Steve and Mike and Jane, and they have inside jokes and regular dates and something in common that none of them are quite willing (or capable) of saying out loud. And then she hauls herself off of the couch, and says, “Come on, nerd. We’ve got to go see your twin.” 

Richie scowls up at her, but he takes her hand anyways. “Mike and I _ don’t _ look alike,” he grumbles. “You’re all crazy.” 

Bev scoffs, tugging him up off the couch. “If Mike wore glasses and horrible Hawaiian shirts, you’d be identical, Trashmouth. Like, literal body-double shit,” she informs him seriously, tilting her head back to look up at him. 

Richie grumbles the whole way to the bar where they’re meeting the Wheeler siblings and their respective partners, hands shoved into the pockets of his denim jacket. It’s early enough in the year that it’s still chilly, so Beverly tucks her arm through his and huddles into his side on the walk, doing her best to absorb as much of his heat as possible. “Jesus, Marsh, you’re like a leech,” he says, but he’s grinning, soft and warm under the city lights. 

He holds open the door for her and Bev is quick to duck into the warmth of the bar, grinning at Jane and Mike across the room. Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve have yet to arrive, and Carrie and Sue called in a raincheck, so it’s just the four of them for now. Bev wraps an arm around Jane iin greeting, eyes following Mike’s gaze across the bar. “Who are you staring at, Wheeler?” 

“Stalking,” Jane whispers conspiratorial. 

“I’m not _ stalking _, Jane,” Mike gripes, rolling his eyes. “Look, it’s just- you see that guy over there? Skinny, white-button down, sitting next to a woman twice his size and looking miserable as all get out?” 

Bev and Richie both turn to look, craning their heads to see around Jane. “Brown hair, yeah? No, I see them. Doesn’t explain why you’re stalking, Mike.” Richie asks,

Mike groans in exasperation. “Shut up, will you? I _ know _ the guy, we work together.” He rolls his eyes. “He’s on a blind date, he was talking about it earlier. _ No _ , I did not know that it was at this bar, before you ask, so _ can it _, please. His name’s Eddie, and I’ve been debating going over there and putting him out of his misery since Jane and I got here.” 

“Eddie,” Bev whispers, in that same _ almost-not-quite _recognition. “Richie, do- Richie, that guy who followed you around, with the-”

“Fanny pack,” Richie answers, his head snapping around to look at the man again. “Mike- uh, Mike, what’s your coworker’s last name?” 

Mike raises his eyebrows. “Who’s the stalker now, Trashmouth? It’s Kaspbrak, why? Eddie Kaspbrak.” 

Beverly stumbles, clutching at Richie’s shoulder to keep himself up. Richie looks like he might puke, face stony gray as he stares across the room at the skinny man on a truly unfortunate blind date. “Eddie,” he whispers, eyes wide behind his glasses, and Beverly remembers writing a scarlet _ V _on an arm cast, of long summer days spent lounging around in the barrens, in a dark underground clubhouse. Richie was Beverly’s best friend, sure, but Richie’s best friend had decidedly been the short spitfire of a boy with freckles across the bridge of his nose named Eddie Kaspbrak. 

“Jane, take Richie,” Bev says, straightening up and doing her best not to fall over in her heels. The other woman obliges without question, sliding an arm around Richie’s waist as Bev grabs Mike’s arm. “Also, I’m borrowing your husband.” 

“Hey-!” Mike’s protest is cut off as Beverly drags him out of his seat, stalking with single-minded focus towards her childhood friend. “He knows I’m married, Bev, he’s not going to buy that you’re my girlfriend or anything-”

“Follow my lead,” Bev snaps, and then she puts on her biggest smile right as they arrive at the table occupied by the other couple. “Oh my _ god _, Eddie Kaspbrak, is that you?” She squeals, and Eddie turns towards her, brow wrinkling as he squints up at her. He sees Mike and relaxes just a touch, but he’s still giving Bev a quizzical look out of the corner of his eye that shouldn’t hurt her feelings nearly as much as it does. “Bev, remember? Beverly Marsh, we lived in the same town? It’s been, like, forever!” 

“Beverly Marsh,” Eddie repeats, eyes wide. 

“Eddie,” the blonde woman next to him says, “who _ are _ these people?” Beverly is suddenly reminded of Eddie’s mother, and her shrieking _ you stay away from that Marsh girl, Eddie, she’s bad news! _at the top of her lungs. It’s not a pleasant comparison to make, and she resolves to only tell Richie if she absolutely has to. Were he not having a mild panic attack on the other room, Bev is sure he would be having a field day. 

Eddie’s eyes get just a little bit wider. “I- I work with Mike,” he stammers, gesturing, “and Bev- Beverly and I went to school together when we were kids.” Bev should feel a little bad about springing this on him, but despite her own headache pounding at her temples, she can’t bring herself to feel anything but relief. “Yeah. Yeah, it was you, and me, and-” 

“Richie,” Bev supplies helpfully, gesturing over her shoulder. Something in Eddie’s expression goes painfully soft when he spots Richie, and Bev spares a glance back towards her best friend. He’s mirroring Eddie’s expression, still leaning heavily on Jane, who looks like she’s considering dropping him. Time to hurry things up, then. “Mike recognized you, and the minute he said your name, it was like-”

“Everything came rushing back,” Eddie finishes for her. “I know the feeling.” 

“_ Eddie _,” the blonde says, warningly, and Beverly flattens her grin into something she reserves for Carrie’s coworkers, just threatening enough to make the other woman wilt a bit. 

“Anyways,” Bev says, not breaking eye contact with the woman, “I can see you’re _ super _ busy here, but I figured I’d grab your email address, or maybe even your number?” She detaches from Mike and takes another step forwards. “We could go get dinner, you and me, for old time’s sake? Oh, and Richie too, of course.” 

Batting her eyes isn’t necessary, and it’s probably a little mean, but nobody’s ever accused Beverly Marsh of being a _ nice _ girl. 

“Sure,” Eddie says, and he’s smiling now, despite the tension in his face. “Sounds- sounds great, here,” and he grabs a napkin and pulls a pen out of his shirt pocket and starts scribbling things down. “You can call me,” he says, smiling up at her, and Bev smiles back. 

“Well,” she says, grinning, “_ so _good to see you again. And you- what was your name again? Sonia?” 

Eddie blanches. It’s a bit below the belt, but hey- Bev’s gotta look out for her boys. The blonde scowls. “It’s Myra,” she says, “and I didn’t introduce myself at all.” 

Mike looks like he’s very poorly trying not to laugh, and Bev smiles again, blandly. “Well, we’ll be seeing you later, Eddie!” and then she lets Mike tug her away before the poor man starts to splutter. 

“Jesus Christ, Bev, did you get replaced by the Antichrist?” 

“I mean, you _ did _say his date was going poorly,” she replies, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “I just made sure Eddie realized that, too.” 

And it was a little mean. Myra is probably a very sweet woman, and Bev is only just starting to remember Eddie, but there’s a lot that she’s gotten pieces of already- Eddie, complaining about placebos, Eddie’s mother, telling Bev and Richie that _ no, _ they may not see her _ precious little eddie-bear _ , calling them _ dirty _. Beverly remembers what Eddie had looked like, and she had seen it here tonight. Bev remembers doing the exact same thing herself- a guy named Tom, a few months after she met Carrie. Falling back into the habits she had with her father, until Carrie had shaken some sense into her. 

“What is happening,” Jane asks when they get back. “Is your friend… joining us?” 

“Oh my god,” Richie says. Bev’s not sure if he means it in a positive way or not. 

“Not tonight,” Beverly reassures the other woman. It hits her that Mike and Jane aren’t necessarily _ in _on the whole repressed-childhood-adventures of Bev ‘n’ Richie thing, so she reaches over and grasps the shorter woman’s shoulder. “It’s fine, Jane. I’ll tell you everything later, alright?” 

They trade partners, Bev slipping her arm around Richie’s waist as Mike wraps his arm around Jane’s shoulders. Jane gives Beverly a serious stare, taking a long sip of her candy-colored drink. “Friends don’t lie,” she says, and it sounds heavy, serious, less like a statement and more a… declaration. Mike looks more than a little grim at the words, and Bev takes it to be something _ more _. Something like Derry, or Chamberlain High’s prom night circa ‘86. The same something that Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve sometimes share loaded looks about, when they think Bev isn’t paying attention. (It’s not that they’re unobservant- Bev’s just always watching.) 

“You’re right,” Richie says. “We’ll- we’re all gonna talk about this. We’re going to be _ honest _, and maybe get some goddamn answers.” 

“I’ll drink to that,” Bev says, and Richie offers her a smile. It’s not a Trashmouth grin, but it’s something close to it. 

“Fuckin’ L’chaim,” Richie says, and Mike snorts, lifting his own glass, Jane following in suit. 

Later, when Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve have arrived, and Eddie has long since left, giving a wistful glance over his shoulder at them as Myra tows him off to a second location for their supposed date, Mike drags his sister off and whispers frantically in her ear. Nancy looks back over at them, and then back at Mike, and she nods and whispers something in response.

There’s a usual weight to the evening, even as they drink and shoot the shit. Bev doesn’t let go of Richie for the rest of the night; because despite her earlier bravado, the gaps in her memory are still trying to knit themselves shut. There’s not _ enough _, and it’s killing her, slowly but surely. But she does remember Eddie, little Eddie Kaspbrak who was always shorter than her, always talking about the various infections they were going to get from roughhousing and falling off of their bikes. Eddie, who broke his arm the summer they met, who bickered with Richie an endless fashion that bordered on adoring. 

And Richie- Richie looks like he’s seen a ghost. Seeing Bev had been easy, had been mutual, but Bev remembers this feeling from back when she heard Sue say _ Trashmouth _. The lonely, hollow feeling, remembering but not being together, not being whole. Maybe she should be more worried about codependency, but then she thinks about Carrie and Sue, about the Wheeler siblings and their partners, their family, and Bev thinks that maybe it’s just what people of them need. A little codependency to keep them upright. 

“Trashmouth, darling, you doing okay?” She whispers later that night, once they’re back in their apartment. 

His hands are shaking, so he sits on them, a nervous habit that he hadn’t had when they were kids. “I don’t know,” he replies, voice raw and honest. “I don’t know how we- how _ I _ forgot him, Bev. It’s _ Eddie _,” he says, voice cracking. “It’s Eds.” 

“There’s more,” she says, sitting next to him on the couch. She tucks her feet up under her and leans against him, pressing into his side. “I don’t- I don’t know why we can’t remember, Rich, but we’ll figure it out,” she tells him. It feels nice, to be next to him, warm against his side, but there’s something missing. Eddie should be with them, the rest of the Losers should be with them, whoever they are. Wherever they are. “We’ll find them.” 

Richie’s shoulders shake. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Molly Ringwald.” 

Bev reaches down and rubs the palm of her hand, against the smooth scar she doesn’t remember getting. _ Promises you can’t keep _. “We will, Richie,” she whispers again. “I swear- I swear on being a Loser.” 

Neither of them really know what that means anymore, but there’s an unspoken gravity to it that they both feel. They know it’s important, more important than- than Richie’s place on SNL, than Bev’s budding fashion career. It means nothing and everything all at once. 

“On being a Loser,” Richie echoes, and they sit together on the couch, side to side, heart to heart, until Bev isn’t sure how long they’ve been there, and Richie is snoring softly, head tilted back. 

She wakes up at nine with a crick in her neck and the beginnings of a hangover, and during the night Richie apparently attempted osmosis with the couch, so he’s not getting up anytime soon. Bev kisses his forehead, turns their coffee maker on, and pads towards the bathroom with every intention of brushing her teeth and at least _ rinsing _ her hair. She turns the sink on and reaches for her toothbrush, looking down, and-

_ red, all she can see is red, blood gushing out of the faucet and bubbling up from the drain, and it’s covering _ ** _her_ ** _ , and all bev can smell is rust and red, and _

-she staggers backwards, gripping the edge of their shower door. Her breaths come in harsh bursts, and her eyes are burning, and she can’t seem to focus on anything about their bathroom. “What the fuck,” she mumbles, pressing a hand to her forehead, and that’s when she sees- 

_ the sewers, and richie is screaming, and eddie is screaming, and all bev can see is the _ ** _light_ ** _ , and there’s so much all at once, all of her friends dying and dead and years in the future and the face she sees every day in the mirror, and _

-Bev meets her own eyes in the mirror, and she starts to scream. 

Richie crashes through the door barely a second later, big hands wrapping around her arms and tugging her so that they’re looking at each other. “Bev! Beverly!” he shouts, and she’s still screaming, because all she can see is the light, and then the door to their apartment slams open and every light in their apartment shuts off all at once. Bev’s scream dies in her throat, and Richie keeps one hand on her as he whips around, terror in his eyes as he looks at the bathroom door, where he sees- where he sees Carrie. 

She’s panting, brown eyes wild, like she ran all the way here. “I had a bad feeling,” she says in explanation, and Beverly sinks to the floor, shaking. It feels like she’s falling apart at the seams, like her muscles are coming undone and her bones are going to clatter to the floor any second, like she’s a girl made of sticks and strings. She’s going to unravel, and then there’ll be nothing left but the echo of a scream, and everyone will just _ forget- _

“Bev!” Richie’s rough, calloused hands are on either side of her face, and he’s leaning down, their foreheads touching. “Bev, baby, you gotta stick with me,” he pleads, and Bev tries to focus on him- the feeling of his hands, the puff of his breath against her skin, the curl of his hair where their foreheads meet. 

“Richie,” she says, voice small. “Richie, I saw- I saw-” and the words die, cut off with a sob as she lurches forwards into his arms. Slowly, the lights begin to turn themselves back on, and Bev sees Carrie wipe a stream of blood away from her nose almost absentmindedly. Richie rocks Bev back and forth on the cool tile of their bathroom, his mouth pressed to her temple, whispering reassurances. 

“You’re okay, Bev, I’ve got you, we’re okay, we’re _ safe,” _he chants like a mantra, and Bev buries her face in his shoulder and tries not to think about everything she just saw. 

_ Safe from what? _ she wants to ask, but she can’t seem to find her voice. _ Richie, what are we supposed to be so afraid of? _

She isn’t sure that she wants to know. 

Carrie makes them all coffee, and then she raids their pantry to make pancakes while she explains. “It was like… something else was in my head. Like what I did, but in reverse,” she tells them. “It was _ screaming _ your name, Beverly, over and over again, so I dropped everything and came here.” She slides a pancake onto Richie’s plate and then turns back to Beverly. “Did something change, since I last saw you?” 

“Eddie,” Bev replies, and Richie’s grip on his fork goes white-knuckled. “We… we found Eddie, last night, at the bar. Apparently he works with Mike? We need to call him, actually. Later.” 

Carrie hums, lips stretching into a frown. “So you’re remembering,” she says simply, “but not all of the memories are good.” 

Bev thinks about rust, and swallows thickly. “You could say that.” 

Carrie turns around and puts the pan down on their stove. “So we’ve got your repressed memories coming back, and something beyond freaky, and somehow, there’s this big net of people who all know each other who had freaky high school and middle school experiences.” Her frown deepens, eyebrows furrowing. “Sue would say we should call a team meeting.” 

“Sue is usually right,” Richie says, and Bev nods. “That’s kind of her role in this whole thing. Bev’s the social one, you’ve got psychic powers, I’m _ clearly _the funny one, and Sue is always right.” 

Beverly is considering throwing her napkin at him when all of his hair starts to lift, standing on end. Richie scowls at Carrie, who giggles, absentmindedly wiping blood from her nose. “You were asking for it, Trashmouth,” she tells him. “Shut up and eat your pancakes.” He grumbles but complies, and his hair flops down over his forehead and ears. “Anyways,” Carrie continues, as if nothing had happened at all, “you two get your boy, I’ll rally the troops, and we’ll aim for a week from now for a team meeting. And when I get home, I’ll double check my plan with Sue, because she’s _ way _better at this than us.” 

“Right,” Bev says, nodding. “Get Eddie. We can do that, right, Rich?” 

Richie mumbles something around his mouthful of pancakes. Bev’s choosing to take that as a _ yes, ma’am. _

“Excellent.” She pulls a plate of pancakes towards herself, and pretends that her hands aren’t still shaking. “Friday for a team meeting?” 

Carrie nods. “I’ll see if Nancy can host, they have the biggest place.” 

They sit and talk strategy until Carrie has to leave, and then Richie and Bev sit in silence and stare at the phone. (They’ve always- _ always- _been terrible at doing things). “You call him.” 

Richie pulls a face at her. “No, you. You’re the one he talked to at the restaurant!” 

Bev elbows him, trying to jostle him out of his chair. “But he’s _ your _best friend, Rich. You call him!” 

He jostles her back, and Bev yelps, leaning away. “_ You’re _ my best friend,” he protests, but behind his glasses, there’s something softening in his eyes. “Fucking _ fine _,” he relents, “but you have to hold my hand the whole way, Molly Ringwald.” 

She gives him her prettiest smile in response. “Always, Trashmouth,” she replies, and she laces their fingers together as he dials and lifts the phone to his ear. He’s got this look on his face like he’s terrified and thrilled at the same time, and Bev is abruptly reminded of when they were kids, racing down the street on their bikes. He always let her ride double with him, even when they started getting older and Bev was heavier, he would just pedal twice as hard and do wheezy voices through his panting. 

His face lights up when Eddie responds, a grin spreading across his face as he looks at Bev, wide-eyed. Like _ oh my god, he answered! _ “Hey, uh, Eddie?” 

Beverly listens to the conversation one-sided, and she feeds Richie a suggestion for where to get dinner when he panics and looks at her all frazzled. She holds his hand the entire time, the two of them clinging to each other like life lines. “Great,” Richie ends with, “we’ll see you then!”

And then he throws their phone across the room. The cord stretches and then drags the hunk of plastic back, clattering against the counter. “Richie, what the fuck?” 

“That was the most nerve-wracking conversation I’ve ever had,” he tells her flatly. “Beverly, if you ever make me talk to someone on the phone again, I’m going to track down the aliens that erased our memory and forget you again.” 

“I still think it was a cult,” Bev says absentmindedly. “And it’s _ Eddie, _you big baby, you were basically inseparable!” Richie winces, and she leans forwards, squinting at him. “What’s with the face?” 

Richie smooths his face into the picture of faux-innocent, blinking at her from behind his coke-bottle glasses. “What’s with what face?” 

Bev squints, shoving a finger in his face. “You were making a face, Richie, when I was talking about Eddie! What’s your damage?” 

“What’s your damage,” Richie parrots back in a frankly awful impression of her voice. “Nothing’s wrong, Bev, it’s just-” 

The memory hits Bev hard enough to make her stumble. Looking over her shoulder at Richie and Eddie, squabbling in the hammock, legs tangled together. Richie, who never once had a crush on _ her _, because his attention was always on someone else. “You were in love with Eddie,” she says, wide-eyed. Richie flinches at the words, ducking his head, shoulders hunching up around his ears; and Bev’s heart breaks at the sight. “Oh, no, Rich, c’mere,” she murmurs, wrapping her arms around him. “Still?” 

“I haven’t seen him since we were kids,” he says wetly into her shirt. “So, clearly, yes.” 

“Loser,” she says, but it’s soft and fond. “Maybe I should stay home and let you two _ catch up- _” 

“Don’t you _ dare _,” Richie hisses, but his lips curl into a grin. “You’re a menace, Marsh.” 

She grins, before looping her arms around his neck and pressing their cheeks together. “You know it’s okay, right?” She whispers, and Richie’s arms wrap around her waist, slowly but surely. “Rich, honey, you’re okay.” She pulls back and looks at him, their foreheads bumping together. 

“I- It _ wasn’t _ okay, back then.” 

“We’re not back then,” Bev says, voice fierce. “Richie, look at Carrie and Sue! Nancy and her boys! We’re not back then, and we’re not in fucking- fucking Derry, so it doesn’t matter.” She puts a hand on either side of his face, forcing him to look at her. “We don’t have to be scared anymore, Richie.” 

“Right,” he says, pressing his eyes shut. “_ Right.” _

“Now, let’s go get your man!” 

Richie blanches. “He’s not _ my _man- you’re never going to let go of this, are you?” 

Bev grins. “You know it.” 

The place they’re meeting Eddie is a Greek place, and they meet outside of it. There’s a moment of awkward tension where they just stare at each other, Eddie standing across from Richie and Bev, lit blue from the neon sign above the restaurant. Eddie looks… tired, mostly, and apprehensive as he stares at them, looking them over. There’s lines on his face, a mole on his cheek that makes him almost unfamiliar, but Beverly can still see the scrawny kid that he once was. 

It’s Richie who breaks the silence, taking one lurching step forwards, grinning. “Eddie fuckin’ Spaghetti,” he says, and Eddie’s face immeditely runs through the same loops of annoyed-frustrated-fond, wrinkling his nose. 

“Don’t _ fucking _ call me that, Richie, I swear to god,” he replies, but he’s grinning as the two of them hug, wrapping their arms around each other. “You’re such a pain in the ass.” 

“You got _ tall _,” Bev says, stepping in for her own hug. “You used to be so tiny!” 

“Five nine is _ not _ tall,” Richie says, cheeks flushing when Eddie scowls up at him. “And Bev, honey, you’re still taller than him.” 

“You’re just mad because I have front row tickets to this gunshow and you don’t,” she tells him, squeezing Eddie’s arm. Eddie laughs, looping an arm around her waist. 

“You _ wish _ this was you, Trashmouth,” he snarks, and Richie’s cheeks go from pink to scarlet. “Are we gonna eat, or what?” 

It’s easy to fall back in with the two of them, switching between playing mediator and egging them on as they attempt to eat their weight in souvlaki. It’s almost the same as when she had found Richie again, that bone-deep ache for something she hadn’t known that she was missing, all this time. Eddie Kaspbrak, short and loud and the only one of their little gang who could possibly match Richie in all of his obnoxious loudness. She sits and laughs and chats with them as the memories come back, bit by bit, faded glimpses of summers long past. 

“You’re a _ risk _analyst?” Bev asks, biting back a laugh. “You mean they pay you to do the exact same thing you did as kids?” 

Richie howls with laughter as Eddie flips her off. “It’s a _ real fucking job _ ,” he says, “at least I’m not an intern or- or a _ self made artist _,” he protests, but Bev and Richie just laugh harder. “You two and Mike fucking Wheeler, I swear to god,” he says, taking a sip of his beer to hide his smile. 

“You hear that, Bev?” Richie jeers. “I’m a _ self made artist _.” 

“I mean, you’re getting paid to make the same dumb jokes you did when we were kids, so that’s something you two have in common,” she snarks. 

“Yowza, Miss Marsh gets off a good one!” 

It’s not like what she has with Sue and Carrie, or the tentative friendships she’s been forging with Mike and Jane, or Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve. This is something more, a type of belonging that Beverly has never felt before, a bond forged in blood and fire that she can’t quite remember, no matter how hard she tries. There are bits and pieces, things that should scare her, but pressed in between Eddie and Richie Beverly can’t help but feel a little bit invincible. 

“So, uh, are we gonna discuss the childhood-shaped elephant in the room?” Richie asks, once their laughter has faded into comfortable silence. Eddie winces, pressing a hand against his forehead. 

“Actually, we were going to… bring some of our friends in on the loop, later this week, remember Rich?” Bev says, elbowing him. “There’s something not natural about that summer, and we have friends who we think can help- and if you want to bring anyone else, you totally can!” 

Eddie winces again. “I don’t…” he trails off, clearing his throat. “Have very many friends,” he finishes, looking down, and Bev’s heart hurts all over again. 

“I’m hurt,” Richie says, leaning over to jostle Eddie’s shoulder. “You don’t think we’re friends, Eds?” 

“Don’t _ call _me that,” Eddie retorts, shoving Richie’s face away. “Of course we are! It’s just-”

“Just nothing,” Bev tells him firmly. “Losers support other Losers.” 

They walk out of the place a little buzzed, Eddie squished firmly between Bev and Richie. “You’re a flight risk, Kaspbrak,” Bev tells him with an air of false gravity. “Can’t risk you running off.” 

“She’s right,” Richie adds on, voice pitched in mock sympathy. “You might end up on another date with your _ mom _.” 

“Shut _ up _,” Eddie moans, but he’s still smiling, cheeks stretched to accommodate how wide he’s grinning. It makes Bev want to pinch his cheeks like Richie used to. It makes her want to wrap her arms around them and never let them go, to never risk losing this magical thing that they have again. “You two are the worst.” 

Bev grins, pinching Eddie’s side just to watch him squirm. “You still like us, though.” 

“Yeah,” he replies, and Bev watches him look up at Richie, fondness written all over his face. “I still do.” 

He ends up sleeping on their couch, and it’s ridiculous, how soft Richie looks when Eddie’s looking the other way. Beverly makes faces at him as they walk down the hallway to their room, waggling her eyebrows and mouthing things just to get Richie riled. He bickers with her quietly, eyes bright and wild like they haven’t been in a long, _ long _ time. Before they part ways, Bev catches his wrist, pulling him into another hug. 

“Love you, Trashmouth.” 

She can feel him grin against the top of her head. “Love you too, Ringwald.” 

Bev worries, lying in her bed, that Eddie won’t get along with the rest of their friends. He’s mentioned his weird workplace relationship with Mike, and from the fragments of her memory, he’s always been- well, persnickety, to say the least. And Bev loves her friends, knows that without them she wouldn’t have Richie, wouldn’t be the same person she is today, and she wants so badly for Eddie to slot right in with the rest of their group- her _ family _. 

They drag him to the Team Meeting, despite his protests, and when he walks into the room, everyone falls silent to turn and look at him. Bev’s palms are sweating, because some of her friends- namely Carrie, Jane, and Nancy- are _ scary _, and they’re all giving Eddie the same emotionless look as they quite obviously look him over.

Then Nancy raises an eyebrow and says, “Wow, I’m starting to see why you guys were called the Losers.” 

“Oh, fuck _ off _,” Richie fires back, collapsing on top of Steve. “You were not any cooler than me in high school, Nancy Wheeler-Byers-Harrington,” he accuses, and she tosses her head back and laughs. 

“She _ was _ ,” Jonathan protests, grinning. “Nancy Wheeler and Steve Harrington, the epitome of popularity in Hawking, Indiana-” he ducks a pillow thrown from Nancy to continue on “-it was me and the younger kids who were the losers. They played _ so much _ D&D.” 

“Fuck you, Byers,” Mike calls from the kitchen, and Jane flips him off. 

Carrie scoots over on the couch to make enough room for both Beverly and Eddie, patting the cushion. “I think we should make, like, an inter-state Loser’s Club. Sue and Steve aren’t allowed to join,” she says quickly, and then giggles when Sue elbows her. Bev takes the seat gratefully, tugging Eddie along with her. “Nancy can join in, but only on like, an honorary membership, because she’s just too cool.” 

“Cooler than you’ll ever be, Care-Bear,” Nancy retorts primly, and they dissolve into another round of laughter. It’s relieving, that they’re here to discuss something so serious but they’re all still laughing with each other. They’re letting Eddie in on the jokes like he’s always been there, and maybe he has, because Bev likes to think she and Richie have been carrying parts of the lost Losers with them all along. 

She really didn’t have anything to worry about in the first place. 

“Alright, so, down to business,” Sue says, settling onto the arm of the couch next to Carrie. “Who wants to share their fucked-up teenage trauma first?” 

The atmosphere dies down a little, and there’s a lot of really heavy looks being shared around. Eventually, Bev clears her throat, locking eyes with Richie across the room. Eddie’s hand laces through hers, squeezes, and she shuts her eyes. “Well, I think we might have it easiest, considering we can’t actually remember any of it,” she says. No one laughs.

“Wow,” Richie says. “Tough crowd.” 

Steve elbows him. 

They take turns, spilling their story. Bev, Eddie, and Richie go first, talking about childhoods they can’t remember, blood covered bathrooms and the unending sense that they’re supposed to be afraid. Nightmares that leave them sweating through the sheets but without a single memory to explain why. Bev, shoulders shaking, talks about the abuse she nearly forgot, about the father she _ killed _, about the police who slept the whole thing under the rug. 

When they’re finished, Carrie’s grip on Sue’s hand is white-knuckled. “Maine is really fucked up,” she says, and it would sound like a joke if she didn’t look so afraid. Then she takes a deep breath, still holding Sue’s hand, and says “So, when I was in my senior year, my school blew up on prom night. Everyone in our class but Sue and I died.” Carrie’s grip tightens, and she grits her teeth. “I- It was me. I was the reason the school blew up.” 

Carrie weaves them a tale of bullying, of her mother’s religious fanaticism. Of the backwards, small-town mentality that makes Bev’s heart lurch of sympathy. Sue chimes in here and there, talking about making mistakes and following the crowd, and Steve winces in sympathy across the room. It ends with Chamberlain High School’s Senior Prom of ‘86, pig’s blood and cruel pranks and Carrie bleeding out in a parking lot while Sue tried to keep her conscious. “No one else remembers,” Carrie says at the end. “That it was me. I don’t- I’m not proud of it, I _ hate _myself for it, but I didn’t know what I was doing.” She takes a deep, shaking breath. “It was like I was possessed. No excuse, but…” she trails off, pressing her hands against her eyes. 

Bev leans over and wraps an arm around her shoulders, tucking herself in close. “You’re okay, Carrie,” she says quietly, and the rest of the room watches in heavy silence as she tries to collect herself again. 

Surprisingly enough, it’s Jane who speaks next. “I was a government experiment,” she says flatly. She rolls up the sleeve of her shirt, shows off the tattoo on her arm: a little _ 11 _ in plain black ink. “My full name is Jane Eleven Hopper-Wheeler, and I opened a portal between dimensions.” 

“That portal stole my little brother, and also released a monster,” Jonathan adds. “Then that monster haunted us for… an unfortunate several years.” 

“I broke into a Russian spy lab with two actual children and my lesbian best friend,” Steve tells them. “That was one hell of a fourth of July.” 

Everyone is staring at them. Richie twists around in Steve’s lap to stare in amazement from behind his glasses, looking more than a little awe-struck. “What the fuck,” he says, and Steve just grins. 

“Do we win? I think we win.” 

“_ I _win,” Jane- Eleven? No, Jane- says. “I fought monsters. You got kidnapped and drugged.” 

“She has a point,” both Wheeler siblings say at the same time, and then they lean over to high-five each other. 

They tell each other about their years in Hawkins, Indiana. Being afraid of the government, of adults, not trusting anyone but themselves. “We were like two movies running in parallel,” Nancy says. “Jonathan and I were hunting monsters, and Steve was trying to corral the kids around alien conspiracies.” They talk about bullies, about a friend named Dustin screaming _ you better run! she’s our friend and she’s fucking crazy! _ and Jane’s mouth quirks into a smile at the memory. They talk about their parents, about how no one else in Hawkins seemed like they could see what was happening. 

Each story they tell resonates something deep in Beverly’s bones. Eddie doesn’t let go of her hand the entire night, and eventually Richie comes and drapes himself across the two of them, as much skin contact as he can manage. Everything is still so far out of her reach, memories twisted and faded, but they come up with a list. _ Derry, Maine. Missing Childhood. Unusual connection to others- like calls to like? _

“So, there were seven Losers total, right?” Jonathan asks, eventually. “And we have three, so there’s only four left.” 

“Yeah, we only have to find four people who could be anywhere in the country,” Mike says sarcastically. “Or out of the country. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.” Three people throw pillows at them, and they all connect, knocking him sideways in his chair. “I’m just being realistic!” 

“Yeah, and how many friends do we have across the country?” Nancy asks, just as sarcastic as her brother. “If we’re right, and like really does call to like, then we should start by calling Robin and Veronica first.” 

“Why not the rest of the party?” Jane asks, sounding a little put out. “I miss Max.” 

Nancy considers this for a second, before saying, “I like Veronica best.” 

“Robin’s going to be so hurt,” Steve says, teasing, and they all dissolve back into bickering. 

Sitting there, caged in by Richie and Eddie and Carrie and Sue, Bev feels something in her chest come loose. She feels- _ light _, but also grounded, the oddness of her situation made less odd by the comparisons of her friends. She thinks, just maybe, that they really have a shot at doing this, finding the rest of the Losers, one by one. Piece by piece, a puzzle coming back together, a picture coming into clarity. 

“Alright, then,” she says eventually. “What the fuck are we waiting for?” 


	2. 2000 - 2007

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Our memories got erased by a weird murder cult from our town,” Eddie snaps. “You don’t have shit on us, Dan.” 
> 
> “Aliens,” Bev says under her breath. 
> 
> “Shut up,” Eddie says back. “It was not aliens.” 
> 
> Danny blinks at them. “Um.” 

**2000**

They throw a huge party for the start of the new millennium, because they’re still young enough that it feels like a good idea. Richie buys her a pair of those kitschy party glasses that say  _ 2000 _ , and the middle zeroes are the eyes, and Bev loves them with her whole heart. She’s wearing them in almost every picture they take, except for the ones where Eddie or Carrie steal them from her. They all scream along with the countdown, and the ball drops on TV, and several blocks away. When midnight comes, Jonathan and Steve are making out in the corner, so Nancy dips Bev and kisses her like her life depends on it. 

It’s the best kiss Bev has ever had, and she informs Nancy of that fact. It does, unfortunately, mean that she misses Eddie pressing a kiss to Richie’s cheek in some half-desperate notion of keeping the midnight kiss a “bro thing”. Thankfully, because Susan Snell is the best person on the planet, there are pictures. Bev prints one out to keep in her wallet, and she proudly unfolds it to shove in Richie’s face as often as she possibly can. 

Regardless of what Richie says, Beverly Marsh is a  _ great _ wingwoman, thanks. 

She wakes up on January 1st, 2000, with her face pressed against Steve Harrington’s bare ass. Overall, not ideal, but still better than most of the asses attending the party, so, overall, Bev’s choosing to call it a win. There’s glitter on her face, when she sees herself in the mirror, and when she checks, there is also glitter all over Steve’s ass. It’s not entirely clear where the glitter started. 

“It started on his ass,” Sue supplies helpfully when Bev wanders into the kitchen. Bev stops, and squints. 

“You’re not, like, telepathic,” she asks, “are you?” Because that would be just the right touch of weirdness to push their whole situation right over the edge. 

“Absolutely not,” Sue replies. “I take pride in being the only normal person here.” 

Bev opens her mouth to protest, and then reconsiders, closing it. She opens it again a moment later to ask: “Is there coffee?” 

Sue grins and points at the stove in response. Bev walks across the kitchen, puts both of her hands on Sue’s face, and says, “You’re an angel. Leave Carrie and elope with me to Vegas.” 

“Carrie would hunt you down,” Sue says. “And promptly steal me right the fuck back from you.” 

“Harsh, but probably true,” Bev agrees, letting go of Sue to go get herself a cup of coffee. 

Everyone is atrociously hungover when they wake up, and it takes Steve  _ far  _ too long to find his pants, to Nancy’s delight, Jonathan’s embarrassment, and Richie’s copious dick jokes. They’re all in various states of undress, or wearing different clothes than they started in, and no one really remembers when Steve lost his pants. Bev, personally,  _ loves  _ her outfit: she somehow managed to trade her outfit for Richie’s shirt (way too big) and Eddie’s pants (hilariously tight). Eddie is wearing her pants, and her shirt is stretched across Richie’s chest in a way that’s positively raunchy. Everyone seems, for the most part, completely unbothered by this fact. Eddie can’t look at Richie without turning pink, and Richie seems blissfully oblivious to this fact, and watching them be idiots about each other fills Bev with the overwhelming type of love that makes her want to hug them. 

So she does, wriggling between them and wrapping her arms around them both, relishing in the comforting pressure of them around her. They stay like that for a little longer than they maybe should, but Beverly has embraced the codependency of being part of Richie and Eddie’s personal gravity. They’re  _ RichieandEddie _ , like  _ CarrieandSue  _ and  _ MikeandJane _ , but they’re also  _ RichieEddieBev _ , strung together by fate and chance in equal measure. She can’t bring herself to feel guilty about it, to feel the shame so many people have tried to instill in her. They’re her boys, her best friends, and she wants to love them wholly, unapologetically, without restraint or requirement.

Internally, she makes a New Year’s resolution, a promise to herself.  _ Love them _ , she thinks.  _ Love them, and be true. _

**2001**

Y2K comes and goes, and it leaves Bev aching for people she doesn’t remember, her resolution still sitting heavy in her chest. Sometimes it’s easy to ignore, laughing with her friends, making stupid jokes, working on her designs. Right now, it’s easy to ignore, sitting on Sue’s countertop while she and Nancy try to make sugar cookies for the Fourth of July, summer heat permeating every inch of the apartment. Sue smacks Bev’s hands away every time she tries to steal bits of dough or dip her fingers into the mixing bowl of icing, and Nancy laughs and scoots the bowls closer to Bev every time. 

Richie and Steve are playing cards at the kitchen table, a game that doesn’t seem to have any rules that Bev can figure out. They’re having a good time, though, laughing and talking trash and accusing each other of cheating at seemingly random intervals. Jonathan, Mike, and Jane are all also sitting at the table: Jonathan has a copy of  _ The Lord of The Rings _ open in front of him, Jane looking curiously over his shoulder, reading in tandem. Mike has his feet up, a comic held in his hands, and is steadily ignoring Richie and Steve, flicking through the pages lazily. It’s a good kind of day, relaxed and sweet, summer sitting on Bev’s shoulders like a jacket that fits perfectly, not a stitch out of place. When she thinks about it, she can remember-

_ ice cream melting down her fingers, laughter caught in the back of her throat, the rich earthy dirt of the clubhouse. an old bike, silver, riding double and going fast enough to outrun the devil himself, screaming at the top of her lungs but not in fear, in joy, in excitement, because she’s never felt more alive. a yoyo’s string wrapped around her fingers, pride blossoming in her chest at the stars in richie’s eyes while she shows off _

-more about her childhood, glimmering moments that slip through the cracks into her consciousness. They’ve all been remembering more, something pulling them in closer as they look for the others, eyes peeled and watching for people like them, like Carrie, like everyone from Hawkins.  _ Anomalies _ , Nancy calls them,  _ people who are just a little bit weirder than everyone else _ . Beverly’s got her brain on anomalies and her fingers plucking a piece of cookie dough out of the bowl when the door slams open, and she just about falls off the counter with how hard it makes her jump. 

“Jesus, Carrie,” she says, jumping down from the counter and walking out into the hallway. “Where’s the fire? What’s got you slamming-” 

The words die on her tongue when she sees that it’s not just Carrie and Eddie, back from the grocery store. Carrie’s dragging a harried looking young man behind her, someone around Bev’s age, dark-haired and scruffy looking. Eddie brings up the rear, and he looks kind of sickly-excited, the type of anxious that makes his hands shake, rattling the bags of groceries he’s holding. It makes Bev’s hackles rise, her eyes falling to the unfamiliar young man. “Who’s this?” 

“Bev,” Carrie says, voice shaking with excitement. “Bev, he’s one of us. _ ”  _

Beverly’s eyes flick from the man to Carrie to Eddie and back to the man, and she pauses. “You had freaky parents who tried to convince you that you’re evil?” She asks, before turning to Carrie. “Care, you know you can’t just kidnap people who had shitty childhoods, right?” 

Carrie rolls her eyes. “No, not that.” She glances at the man. “Well, maybe that, but Danny can tell us about his fucked up childhood on his own time,” she allows, and the man- Danny -looks a little bit like he wants to die. “I mean that he’s an  _ anomaly _ ,” Carrie continues, and Bev’s breath catches in her throat. “We were in the store, and- and he can do what I do!” 

“The two of them nearly broke the Trader Joe’s,” Eddie grumbles, edging around Carrie and Danny to go deposit the bags in the kitchen. “Fucking psychics.” 

“Don’t be rude!” Carrie shouts after him, and Bev realizes that they’ve gathered and audience- Sue, wiping flour-covered hands on her apron, Jane, who’s squinting at Danny with unabashed suspicion, and Steve, who’s got a hand on Jane’s shoulder. 

“Hey,” Steve says, all peace-keeper, his hand firm on Jane’s shoulder. “I’m Steve, that’s Bev, this is Jane and Sue. It’s nice to meet you, dude.” 

Steve’s barely done talking when Jane’s stepping forwards, her words careful and slow, like she talks when she’s nervous. According to Mike, she didn’t know how to speak very well when they found her, so all of her words were slow and shaky, like she was tasting the weight them in her mouth for the first time. “Can you do what we do?” She asks, and Danny doesn’t say anything, but Jane’s eyes go wide. They stand there, staring at each other, and eventually Jane’s mouth splits into a wide grin. 

“Are they-” Sue starts, and Carrie nods. “Talking without words,” Sue continues, but it’s said with a tone of wonder. 

“He’s  _ one of us _ ,” Carrie repeats, and this time, Bev doesn’t protest. 

Between Sue and Steve, everyone gets corralled back into the kitchen, and Danny looks around all of them in wonder. Bev recognizes that look, that broken-hearted kind of wonder at seeing groups of people so close that they just know each other, moving like the gears of a clock, all in sync. She felt it the first time she met Sue and Carrie, watching the way they didn’t even have to talk. She knows that people feel it when they see her with Eddie and Richie, even when they’re missing their other parts. 

They tell Danny about themselves, the scent of sugar cookies baking and sweet lemonade from all of their cups. They tell him about Derry, about Chamberlain, about Hawkings, about monsters and fear and psychic powers. Slowly but surely, Danny starts to open to them, as well- he tells them about a hotel, about a place that thrived off of fear and evil and pain, and Bev thinks about the sewers below Derry. 

“I’ve always called what I can do… I’ve always called it the  _ shining _ ,” Danny tells them, clearly hesitant. “I knew there were others who could shine, but I didn’t realize that it would be… like this, meeting you.” 

And Bev loves the sound of that, the idea that Carrie and Jane and Danny  _ shine _ . Carrie and Jane have both always walked on eggshells, not proud of their powers, reluctant to embrace the fire that forged them. But putting it like that- they shine, bright and beautiful, and it makes sense that they all tend to gravitate around them; planets drawn to orbit around stars. 

Richie claps a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Welcome to the Loser’s Club, inter-state edition,” he says. “We’ve got fucked up childhoods and a hell of a lot of trauma to show for it, but at least we’re in it together,” he jokes, and Eddie elbows him. 

“Beep beep, Rich,” Beverly says, and he grins at her, lazy and fond. 

Danny doesn’t quite fall into place like the rest of them had, but he  _ tries _ , earnest and eager. It’s clear that he’s never had a friend like them before, maybe never had a friend at all, especially not any that  _ understand _ . Bev can see herself in the slope of his shoulders, the way he flinches. She sees herself the same way that she can see herself in Carrie, in Eddie. She doesn’t ask him about it. 

Bev Marsh can be patient. When Danny wants to come talk to her, he will, but for now, she invites him to their Fourth of July party, and out for coffee, and sneaks one of her homemade sweaters into his bag during movie night. They’re all terrible at making people feel welcome, because they’ve never needed to  _ try _ , but Bev likes Danny. 

She’s sitting next to him on Jonathan’s couch a few months later, talking about Halloween. “I can’t believe your brother is coming up to New York!” She chirps, and Jonathan looks genuinely thrilled at it, but it’s nothing compared to the undiluted joy radiating from Mike and Jane. 

“He doesn’t like to spend it alone,” Jonathan explains. Meeting the infamous Will Byers is an exciting prospect for sure, and it’s common knowledge that Halloween excites and terrifies everyone in their little circle. 

“He’s the one who shines, right?” Danny asks, and Jane nods. 

“Not in the same way,” she says, “but he shines. He understood. A little like Beverly, I think.” 

Bev blinks. “Wait, what?” 

Jane’s brow furrows, mouth quirking down at the corners. “You didn’t know?” She asks, and Bev shakes her head. Mike’s mouth pulls into a frown, and he wraps an arm around his wife. “It’s like Will,” she says. “He didn’t- the shine didn’t come from  _ inside  _ of him, but he still had it?” She breaks off, frustrated, and turns to Mike. “Explain, please.” 

“Will was… more involved with the Upside Down then the rest of us,” Mike starts, unsure. “When he came back, he was… different. It didn’t happen to El because she already had the shining, but it was almost like the power was clinging to him, afterwards. Like dust on his clothing.” 

“We thought you knew,” Jane says quietly. “We thought that was how you found Carrie.” 

“The light,” Bev says under her breath, almost unaware of it. A hysterical laugh bubbles in her throat, but she clamps her lips shut, refusing to succumb. She had remembered the  ** _lights _ ** in the bathroom, and now she knows why it had made her skin crawl, because they had left a mark on her. She thinks, distantly, that it makes some sort of sense, and that maybe someone is yelling her name. 

_ bev! _ they shout.  _ bev! BEV!  _ ** _BEVERLY!_ **

“BEVERLY!” Eddie yells, hands on her shoulders. She blinks, realizing Eddie must have come into the room at some point, and he’s the only one close to her- Danny and Jane are against the wall, Mike and Jonathan standing protectively in front of them. Danny looks  _ terrified _ , and Jane looks angry, and the lights are flickering. Eddie’s on his knees, hands tight on her shoulders, eyes wide with panic and fear and lit up with concern. “Bev,” he says again, just her name. 

All at once, her eyes fill with tears. “Oh,  _ Eddie, _ ” she says, tremulous, and he surges up to hold her, arms strong around her. 

“Shh, shhh, Bev, it’s okay, I’ve got you,” Eddie says, holding her close as she shakes. 

“I’m sorry,” she manages, and Eddie is joined by Jane, her fingers light as they brush red curls away from Bev’s cheeks. 

“You didn’t mean to,” Jane says, voice soft. “You… that wasn’t you, Bev.” 

Danny is still huddled against the wall, eyes wide. “You couldn’t stop the memory,” he says, half to himself, and then he’s straightening up. “I’m- Bev, I might be able to help you.” 

Bev sniffs, extracting herself from Eddie’s grasp. He moves up next to her on the couch, leg pressed to hers, a solid line of comfort as Danny approaches the couch. “I have… boxes, in my brain, where I keep my ghosts.” He blanches. “That sounds really fucked up.” 

“Our memories got erased by a weird murder cult from our town,” Eddie snaps. “You don’t have shit on us, Dan.” 

“Aliens,” Bev says under her breath. 

“Shut up,” Eddie says back. “It was  _ not _ aliens.” 

Danny blinks at them. “Um.” 

“It was aliens,” Bev tells Danny, wiping her eyes off. “Sorry, sorry. You were talking about boxes?” 

“I have… boxes, in my brain, where I put the things that haunt me. Things from the hotel that never went away, when they track me down, I can keep them, uh, locked down.” 

Jonathan coughs. “Hey, uh, not to step on any toes, but…” he looks around them. “I’m no psychic, but maybe we should avoid more repression?” 

Jane tilts her head. “He might have a point.” 

“Hey, look it- you’re not being fucking haunted!” Danny replies, affronted, and Bev reaches out and puts her hands on his face. He wrinkles his nose at her. “You smell like despair.” 

“Fuck off,” Bev fires back, fondly. “You’re the sweetest motherfucker I’ve ever met, Danny Torrance, but I’m trying to remember  _ more _ , not less.” She pauses. “And I don’t think that my bad memories can actually, like, touch me.” She pulls his face towards her and bonks her forehead into his, grinning. “But thank you.” 

He’s scarlet, and very clearly not looking at her, but his mouth is tilted into a soft smile.  _ January embers,  _ Bev thinks, and something warm and comforting blooms in her chest.  _ No _ , she tells herself sternly.  _ Danny isn’t whoever you’re thinking of. That’s not fair. _

She’s saved from confronting  _ that _ train of thought by the door slamming open, Richie and Steve piling into the apartment, arms laden with Party City bags. 

“Oh, no,” Eddie says when he sees them. “Richie, what did you  _ do? _ ” 

Richie grins, crossing the room in a few quick steps to drop himself next to Eddie and Bev on the couch. “Wouldn’t  _ you _ like to know?” he asks, ignoring the solemn air in the room in favor tossing one of the bags at Bev, who releases Danny to catch it. “Hey, Beverly, I don’t know if you had costume plans, but you do now.” 

“I was going to go as Carrie,” she tells him, opening the bag. Inside is a labeled costume set from Party City-  _ Catwoman _ . “Richie, you  _ didn’t _ .” 

“I did,” he informs her, beaming. “Please wear it. Please, please, pretty please, won’t you match with me?” 

Bev scrambles over Eddie to snatch the other bag out of Richie’s arms, looking inside and bursting into laughter at the costume inside. “Oh my god,  _ Rich _ . Yes, a thousand times yes.” 

“You’ve made me the happiest man alive,” he tells her, planting a sloppy kiss on her cheek. 

“Euch, Richie, get off,” she replies, shoving at his face, but she’s laughing. 

Her laughter dies in her throat when she catches the look on Eddie’s face. “I’m gonna- uh, go get myself a glass of water,” he says, hurriedly standing and making his way to the kitchen. Beverly’s mouth twists into a frown as she watches him go. Steve drapes himself over Jonathan’s shoulder and raises an eyebrow at Richie, who groans and drapes an arm across his face. 

“Leave me  _ alone _ , this is equally your fault,” he groans, yelping when Bev pinches his side. “Eddie, we have one for you too!” he hollers, and Bev pinches him again. 

“Is not,” she snipes back. “Everyone knows I’m going to steal Nancy away from those two so we can start a all-woman queer commune with Sue and Carrie.” She pauses, twisting around to look at Jane. “Hey, Jane?” 

Jane tilts her head. “Yeah?” 

“Would you leave Mike to come start an all-woman gay commune with Sue, Carrie, Nancy and I?” 

Jane tilts her head. “Probably, yeah.”

Mike frowns. “Stop trying to steal my wife away, you witch.” 

“It’s okay,” Jane comforts, patting his cheek. “You can elope with Will once I’m gone.” 

Mike pulls a face at her. “Will and I had a  _ fling _ when we were _ sixteen _ , El. We aren’t going to elope.” 

“Keep telling yourself that, kid,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. “Dustin’s got twenty bucks riding on you changing your mind.” 

“Dustin is a bastard and a terrible best friend,” Mike says flatly. He wraps an arm around Jane, pressing his lips to her cheek. “And we all know you wouldn’t leave me for anybody but Max.” 

Jane gives Bev an apologetic look. “He’s right. Good luck with your commune, though!” 

Bev throws her head back and laughs, loud and bright. “Thanks, Jane. If you ever get bored of your boy, you know who to call.” 

Jane winks at her, and Mike makes a pitiful noise until his wife wraps her arms around him and presses a kiss to his cheek. Bev tumbles off of Richie’s lap and onto the couch next to him- still warm from Eddie’s butt, ew- sticking her legs in his lap. “Seriously, Rich, when are you gonna do something about this?” 

“Do something about what?” Eddie asks, and then he frowns at Bev. “Aw, you stole my spot.” 

“About his terrible taste in costuming and clothes,” Bev replies easily, hauling herself off of the couch. She bows dramatically, gesturing towards the seat. “Your throne awaits, m’lord.” 

Eddie drops back into his seat, and then Bev plants herself down on top of him, stretching her legs out to connect them to Richie,  _ one two three _ Losers in a pod. “Nothing is wrong with my sense of costuming and fashion,” Richie tells them, letting his hands rest on Bev’s ankle. He drags the edge of her sock (Carrie’s sock, actually) up and down. “I am the pinnacle of fashion.” 

“You’re wearing a neon green and pink Hawaiian shirt,” Steve points out, not unkindly. 

Jonathan elbows him. “It’s offensive to Hawaiian people to associate that monstrosity with them,” he says, very unkindly. Richie gasps, clutching at his heart like he’s been shot. Jonathan flips him off with both hands, and Bev pokes him in the side with her toe. 

“This is my favorite shirt!” he says, wounded. “Come on, I got this in LA! It reminds me of home!” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, putting his chin on Bev’s shoulder and wrapping an arm around her waist. “All in favour of burning Richie’s favorite shirt, say aye.” 

There’s a chorus of aye’s from around the room, only slightly battered down by Richie’s cry of “NAY!” at the top of his voice. “I can’t believe this, you traitors!” he says, clutching his shirt. “This is a good shirt! Pink and green are complimentary! That’s good fashion!” 

“He’s not technically wrong,” Bev says, muffling her own laughter. “In Richie’s defense, it can’t get much worse than this, right?” 

That question is sufficiently answered on Halloween, when Richie comes out of his room wearing a lot of spandex that leaves very little to the imagination. “Oh my god,” Bev says, laying a hand on her chest, clad in similarly revealing black fabric. “I can see almost all of your dick.” 

Richie beams at her. “Your catsuit is zipped up to high, Bev. We’re trying to be accurate to the real costumes, right? Batman and Catwoman?” 

“I’ll unzip my suit more when we start doing shots,” she tells him, hooking their arms together. “Eddie! We’re gonna be late!” 

“I think I’m sick,” Eddie calls back, unconvincingly. “You guys should just go without me.” 

“Bullshit!” Bev calls back. “If you aren’t puking or congested, you’re coming to this party, asshole.” 

“It’s the costume,” Richie whispers. “He’s gonna chicken out, and you’re going to owe me twenty bucks, Marsh.” 

“Not a goddamn chance,” Bev whispers back, releasing Richie to knock furiously on Eddie’s bedroom door. “Come on, Eddie!” 

The door opens a crack, and Eddie’s face appears. “Why do you insist on tormenting me, Bev?” 

“Because I love you like a brother,” Bev tells him seriously, “and thus I have to treat you how Nancy treats Mike. Now get out here and show me those legs, Kaspbrak!” 

Eddie heaves a long, incredibly Mike-like sigh, and flings the door open. Richie is dressed as Batman, Bev has donned Catwoman’s catsuit, and Eddie is standing in the doorway to his bedroom, wearing a Robin costume.

“Holy shit,” Richie says, face pinking. Eddie is scowling, and decidedly  _ not _ looking at them, and Bev is unabashedly staring. “Holy  _ shit _ , Eds.”

“Your  _ legs _ ,” Bev says, and she knew this was coming, but she’s still more than a little awe-struck. “Eddie, did- did you shave them?” 

“Shut up,” Eddie says. “I’m dedicated to the look.” 

“Holy shit,” Richie repeats. Bev thinks, briefly, that his brain might be broken. “You- your  _ legs _ .” 

Eddie storms past Richie and flings the apartment door open. “We’re leaving!” He announces. “We’re leaving, so that the rest of our asshole friends can make fun of me for my perfectly reasonable costume, Jesus Christ.” 

Richie very nearly sprains his ankle in his haste to twist around and watch Eddie walk away. “Bev,” he says. “When I die tonight, and I will, please give Steve all of my things.” 

“Got it,” Bev says, grabbing his wrist and dragging him out the door after Eddie. “Shamelessly encourage you to make out with Eddie until you cave and tell him about your feelings.” 

“Bitch,” he snipes, pinching her side. 

“Dick,” she retorts, elbowing him. 

“You’re both menaces,” Eddie cuts in. “Now can you please get into the cab?” 

They tumble in after each other, one two three in a set, their arms tangling together. It’s a short ride to  _ NancyandJonathanandSteve’s _ place, and there’s already a throng of people inside. Bev grabs Richie’s wrist, trusts him to grab Eddie’s, and tugs them both through until they find Nancy, who’s dressed as Sherlock Holmes. 

“You look amazing!” Bev chirps, throwing her arms around the other woman. 

“Oh my god, so do you!” Nancy crows. “And thanks so much- it’s getting back at a career filled with shitty Nancy Drew jokes.” She turns to Richie and Eddie, eyes widening. “Why?” 

“Why not!” Richie replies, slinging an arm around Eddie’s shoulder. 

Nancy stares at him, deadpan. “Rich- Richie, there are  _ so many reasons _ .” 

“So many reasons for what?” an unfamiliar voice asks, and Bev turns around only for her heart to stop. 

There’s two young men standing in front of them, both dressed as wizards in drastically different ways. The first, the one who spoke, is wearing a dark purple robe with several gold and silver stars stuck to the hem. He also has a pointy wizard’s hat set atop his dark, floppy hair, and he’s grinning at Nancy with the sort of familiarity that Jane and Mike do. The second looks decidedly less impressed, wearing jeans and a dark sweater that has a piece of paper labelled “wizard” taped to it. His hair curls over his forehead, cut shorter at the sides, and he’s got wire-framed glasses perched on the tip of his nose. 

He’s not looking at Bev, though- he’s looking at Richie. Richie is slack-jawed, pale, and half-reaching out. Eddie’s the same, white in the face and clutching Richie’s arm in a death grip that looks like it might actually be hurting him. None of them can find their voices, mouth dry as they look at the man and he looks back. 

He’s the one who breaks the silence. “What the fuck,” Stan Uris whispers, the first thing he’s said to Bev in eleven years. “ _ Richie?”  _

“Jesus Christ, what are we?” Eddie asks, pushing Richie to the side so he can march up to Stan, throwing his arms open for a hug. “Chopped fucking liver?” 

Stan barely hesitates before throwing his arms around Eddie, and then Richie and Bev are shrieking and piling on with him, collapsing onto Nancy’s kitchen floor in a pile of shrieking laughter. “What the  _ fuck _ ,” Stan repeats, but he’s grinning and flushed and beautiful. 

“Stan the  _ fucking _ Man,” Richie crows, ruffling his hair. “What a shitty Halloween costume, dude! Does this seriously just say  _ wizard  _ on it?” 

“That’s what I said!” The other wizard protests. “Also, uh, not to repeat Stan, but what the fuck is going on?” 

“I-” Stan falters, brow furrowing. “What  _ is  _ happening?” 

Bev reaches up and lets Nancy tug her off the floor, yanking Eddie up with her, starting the chain reaction to get them all back on their feet. Bev can’t stop staring at Stan, the slope of his nose and the crow’s feet forming at the corners of his eyes, the confused pull to his mouth. “You must be Will,” Bev says warmly to the other man, and he nods. 

“Yeah,” he answers, and then he looks from Nancy to Bev to Stan, and his eyes get wider. “Wait, fuck, is this the-” 

“Murder cult erased memories?” Nancy finishes for him. “Yeah, that’s these guys. Do you need a place to talk quietly?” 

“Please,” Eddie says at the same time that Richie and Bev chorus “It was aliens!” 

Nancy bundles all of them into her bedroom, and then promptly leaves to try and find the rest of the Interstate Loser’s Club. Stan’s starting to look more than a little green at the edges, so Will sits him down on the bed and shoves a wastebasket into his hands, which Stan clutches at gratefully. “Ugh, this is  _ so weird _ ,” he groans, and Bev hums sympathetically, patting his back. 

“It’ll pass,” she promises, biting back her grin. “I missed you,” she adds, and Stan bumps their shoulders together. 

“I missed you too, Beverly,” he replies, and Bev can see a thin line of scars along the sides of his face that she didn’t notice before. She knows how he got those scars, remembers bandages wrapped around his face, knows at the very core of her being that it ties into all of this. 

The door to the room flies open and Jane and Mike come crashing through, throwing themselves bodily at Will. Beverly knows for a fact that it’s not the first time they’ve seen him since he got here, but it warms her heart to see them so unabashedly loving each other, unafraid and unapologetic. 

It doesn’t take long for everyone else to pile in, sitting on the bed and floors until they’re in some vague approximation of a circle. Danny makes a beeline for Bev when he enters the room, settling next to her on the sliver of bed that’s left. “You okay?” he whispers, and she nods, cheeks staining pink. 

“This meeting of the Loser’s Club- Interstate Chapter -is officially in session,” Richie yells, and sitting between Stan-  _ Stan _ , smart and sensible and wonderful, how could she have ever forgotten him?- and Danny, Bev lets her shoulders relax. 

It’s not going to be easy, because nothing in Beverly’s life has ever been easy. But at least she won’t be doing it on her own. 

She’ll have her family behind her. 

**2004**

Stan gets married in April. 

They all make their way down to Atlanta for it, and Stan’s wedding party is the rest of the original Losers- Richie is his best man (who signed their  _ ketubah _ as a witness, along with Patty’s mother), with Eddie and Bev as the groomsman and groomswoman. Richie and Eddie wear matching tuxes, black with emerald green lapels, and Beverly wears a dress of her own creation, long and in a shade of matching emerald. 

Patrica Blum (soon to be Uris) walks down the aisle like she can’t wait to be next to Stan. Beverly completely adores Patty, and has since they met, nearly a year ago now. She gets why people talk about brides  _ glowing _ , now, because Patty looks like the sun, nearly blinding in her unfiltered joy. Halfway down the aisle, she picks up the hem of her dress and marches down towards Stan, almost at a jog, and he laughs when she gets to him, throwing her arms around him. Her father hurries the last few steps to  _ properly _ give her away, and it takes them all a second to get back in order. 

Bev catches Danny’s eye in the crowd while they say her vows, and she winks, just to watch his cheeks flush pink. The thing with them is- weird, still, but good, because Danny is nice and shy and thinks that Bev is wonderful, and Bev likes the way he gets embarrassed and laughs at his jokes and feels more relaxed when he’s in the room. He grins at her, and she grins back before turning to watch Stan crush a glass beneath his foot. 

“ _ Mazel tov! _ ” Everyone shouts, and Patty kisses Stan right on the mouth, and the world is bright around them. 

Bev drags Danny onto the dancefloor, and Richie and Patty whirl by, followed quickly by Stan and Patty’s maid of honor, Adah. Bev lets herself relax into the feeling of Dan’s hand on her waist. They’re not really dancing, they’re- swaying, is the word for it, but it’s nice, just to be close. The intimacy found even in large groups of people like this, a simple two-step dance. 

Danny’s eyes catch on something over her shoulder, and he falls still for just long enough that Bev has to squeeze his hand. “You okay?” she whispers, and he nods, pressing his eyes shut. “Do you need to sit down?” Is met with another nod, so Bev takes his hand and leads him to a table, because she knows that look. Something followed Danny here, and locking memories away isn’t always easy. 

But this is a song and dance Bev knows, because it’s not just Danny. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, he’ll wrap a blanket around her and make her a cup of tea, or Carrie will brush her hair for her, or Richie and Eddie will pile on the couch and try to make her laugh. When Carrie retreats into herself, Sue will press kisses to her temple, or Nancy will come over to talk about her latest article, or Jane will come over and she and Carrie will sit, TV tuned to static, and they won’t say anything at all. Dan Torrance is one of them, and that means Bev knows, by now, to take the glass of champagne and move it to a different table, to slide a glass of water into his hand instead.

“You should go have fun,” he says, and Bev frowns. He smiles at her again, but it’s weak and pinched around the eyes, and her frown deepens. “Seriously, Bev. It’s… I’ll be right here. I promise, okay?” 

Bev summons her best Jane impression. “Friends don’t lie,” she tells him sternly, and his grin looks a little more real, and something in her chest loosens at the sight. “Boyfriends especially don’t lie,” she adds, and she leans down to press a kiss against the corner of his mouth. 

“Boyfriends don’t lie,” he agrees, and he presses the glass of water against his cheek. “Send Sue my way if you see her, yeah? We can be sober together.” 

“Will do,” Bev promises, because she knows exactly where she’ll find Sue- sitting with Nancy and Jonathan, watching as Carrie and Steve try their best to waltz together. It’s easy to tap Sue’s shoulder and jerk her head back towards Danny. “He’s got an unwelcome visitor,” she murmurs, and Sue nods. “Keep him company? I think- I think he’s embarrassed when I see him like this.” Which is dumb, because he’s seen Bev terrified out of her mind about things she can’t remember, and vulnerability is one of the necassary evils of their extended Loser’s club, really. But she can’t blame him properly, because she still has to resist the urge to hide herself away, even now. 

Sue gives Bev a quick hug, and presses her lips to her cheek. “I’ve got your boy,” she promises, and she taps Bev’s elbow to send her off on her way. 

She wanders, for a bit, people-watching and spectating on the wedding. Eventually she cuts her losses and ducks outside into the cool spring night, fishing a cigarette from her purse and leaning against the wall of the building they rented out as the venue. There’s a dark-haired woman on the phone further down the alley, snapping into a silver flip-phone.

“Yeah,  _ William _ , I know what my fucking notes say! It’s a bad ending-  _ no _ , the story isn’t bad, the  _ ending _ is what’s bad, and if you publish it the way it is fans are going to hate it! Look,  _ Attic Room  _ got terrible reviews for it’s-” she cuts herself off with a single sharp exhale, and places a hand on her face. “You hired me for a fucking reason, Bill Denbrough,” she says, and a shiver coils down Bev’s spine at the name. The woman rolls her eyes. “Make  _ a  _ change! Replace an adjective! I’ll look at it again when you actually make a fucking edit,” she snaps, and then she clicks her phone shut. Her eyes catch on Bev, and she gives an apologetic grin, lips chapped and teeth straight. 

“Rough night?” Bev asks, lifting her cigarette to her lips, and the other woman runs a hand through her unruly curls. 

“Fucking clients, right?” she asks, digging in her own clutch for a moment and coming up with a cigarette of her own. “You got a light?” 

Bev hands over her lighter. “Fucking clients,” she agrees. “You know the bride or groom?” 

“Both,” the dark-haired woman replies. “My girlfriend’s best friend is the groom’s friend’s friend,” she explains, and then she rolls her eyes. “But Patty and I go back a little bit, yeah. We went to college together, same major.” 

_ Girlfriend’s best friend is the groom’s friend’s friend _ , Bev repeats in her mind, and then: “Oh my god, are you Veronica?” 

The woman- presumably Veronica, the girlfriend of Steve Harrington’s lesbian best friend from their shared traumatic experience, Robin (a woman who Bev has yet to actually meet)- blinks. “Uh, yeah. Why do you know that?” 

There’s an edge to her voice, like the one Jane gets when she gets accosted by strangers, like the way Eddie’s voice goes up an octave when people are rude to Bev. “No, wait, fuck, that was so creepy,” Bev says, raising her hands in a gesture of innocence. “I know Steve, is all, and you’re- he’s Robin’s friend?” 

At the mention of Steve, Veronica relaxes significantly. “Oh, sure! Steve’s a blast,” she says. “You must be part of that group that’s always gallivanting up around New York, huh? It’s a pleasure to actually meet you…?” 

“Beverly,” Bev fills in, reaching out to shake Veronica’s hand. “Bev, if we’re friends.”

“Bev, then,” Veronica replies with a grin, and Bev can’t help but grin back. 

Veronica ends up being loud, and opinionated, and a little coarse, all of which makes her a  _ great _ editor, she claims. It means Bev loves her, because Bev can also be loud, and opinionated, and a little coarse, and the bite of Veronica’s words have a bitterness to them that Beverly is intimately familiar with. It’s like looking at a mirror, how she could have been, if she had chosen anger. If she hadn’t had Richie, and Eddie, and Stan, and,  _ and _ ,  _ and-  _

“But yeah, I’ve been working for this guy, William Denbrough? He’s good, but like- oh, hey, babe!” Veronica cuts herself off and lights up like a firecracker, taking a few quick steps across the alley to kiss the woman standing there square on the mouth. 

Robin Buckley, of Hawkins fame, is a slender woman with freckles and a black pantsuit on. She kisses Veronica back, and suddenly Bev feels like she’s intruding on the two of them. There’s a discomfort rattling against her bones, so she slips back inside and sits down next to Danny and Sue, and she drinks a glass of water and puts her face on Danny’s shoulder. Danny doesn’t ask, but he wraps an arm around her, and they sit together, and Bev thinks that if she really shone, she’d know exactly what he was thinking. She looks up at him, the scruff on his jaw and the tired light in his eyes, and she thinks maybe she doesn’t need to shine to know what’s going through his head. 

Before Stan and Patty-  _ StanandPatty _ , if Bev is being honest -leave, Stan tucks his arms around Bev and spins her around on the dance floor, laughing all the while. “Stan the man, the first loser married,” Bev jokes, and he smiles at her.

“You and Danny gonna be next?” He asks, and Bev flushes. 

“I think Rich and Eds are the better bet,” she replies, and he rolls his eyes. “I mean, if they ever get their heads out of their asses.” 

Stan and Patty go to Panama for their honeymoon, citing a want to  _ birdwatch _ as their reasoning for the choice. Bev and Danny and everyone else head back to their respective homes, and Bev wakes up in a cold sweat almost every night for the rest of the week. 

On Thursday, she wakes up and she pads to the room where they keep their clunky desktop computer. It takes a while to turn on, and when it does, Bev looks up  _ william denbrough author _ and clicks through to a website that says he’ll be in New York in a month and a half’s time, supposedly reading a preview for his new book,  _ The Black Rapids _ . She writes down the phone number, and  _ denbrough book tour _ underlined six times, and then she sits on the kitchen counter and makes herself a cup of tea. 

“You’re up,” Richie says, padding out into the kitchen absurdly early. Bev’s just finished her third cup of tea and is on her first cup off coffee, trying to stave off that punch-you-in-the-face tired that comes with being awake all night. 

“So are you,” Bev notes, nodding at the clock. “Happy Friday, Rich.” 

“Happy Friday,” he replies, helping himself to a cup of coffee. “Any plans for today, Miss Marsh?” 

“I’ve got a meeting with a client about a dress, and then…” she trails off, looking down at the note.  _ denbrough book tour _ , she wrote. Richie follows her gaze, and then squints, like he can’t quite make out the words even with his glasses perched on his nose. That’s what steels Bev’s resolve about the feeling in her gut, the look on Richie’s face, the not-quite confusion.

William Denbrough is a famous author of multiple short stories and two books, the most recent of which is called  _ The Attic Room _ . He lives in Los Angeles, and somehow, he has managed to pull Veronica Sawyer and Robin Buckley into his own personal gravity, just like Bev had brought Sue and Carrie careening into hers. Somehow, despite his rising popularity, Bev hasn’t even  _ heard  _ of him, and as far as she can figure, neither have Richie, Eddie, or Stan. “Like calls to like,” she says out loud, running her fingers along the edge of the post-it note. “I think that I’m going to call a woman about a book,” Bev tells Richie. 

They’re nearly eye to eye, with Bev sitting on the counter and Richie slouching. He looks at her, careful and calculating, before he nods. “Losers stick together,” Richie says, softly. “If you think he’s one of us, then…” 

Bev leans forwards and kisses him on the nose. “I’d tell you to call Stan, but I don’t want to ruin his honeymoon. Will you ask Eddie about this guy? William Denbrough?” 

Richie scoops up her pen and scrawls it along the inside of his arm. “Just in case,” he says to Bev’s questioning look. “Don’t want the Jedi mind tricks to make me forget.” 

“Nerd,” Bev says, fondly. “I’m gonna go prepare to face the day. Love you, Richie.” 

“Love you, Bevs,” he replies. 

Nearly eight hours later, Beverly’s running on caffeine and vapors, but she’s got Veronica Sawyer on the phone. “Steve explained your whole memory thing,” the other woman says, “and I need you to know, my vote is on magic.” 

“Aliens,” Bev replies. “But magic is at least more creative than cults, so there’s that, at least. Can I ask-”

“What mine was?” Veronica finishes dryly, voice crackling through the receiver. “It’s a long story, and not nearly as supernatural as you or Robin’s. I was just a kid in a fucked up place, is all.” 

_ Weren’t we all _ , Bev thinks. “Sorry,” she says out loud, wincing. “Remembering must be a bitch.” 

There’s some rustling on the other end of the line as Veronica adjusts the phone. “Don’t be sorry,” she tells Bev. “I survived it. I learned from that experience, and I grew. I wouldn’t give that up for anything.” 

For the first time since 1999, Beverly thinks about Tom Rogan and the date she didn’t go on. She thinks about Eddie and the woman he had been with, Myra, she thinks about Richie, biting his tongue and getting someone else to write his jokes, and she thinks about Stan, alone, isolated, never knowing why he doesn’t feel safe. Memories slip through her grasp like water,  _ bevvie are you my little girl stay away from my eddie-bear you theres a woman i see of course she isn’t hot rich am i missing? why am i missing? please i don’t want to go  _ ** _missing_ **

“Beverly?” Veronica’s voice snaps her back to the present, and Beverly blinks, loosening her grip on the phone. “You still with me?” 

“Sorry,” Bev says, shaking her head. “I’m here.”

Veronica’s sigh comes down the line as static. “Right,” she says. “You think my client is one of your Losers, yeah?” 

“I do,” she confirms. “I know it’s just a gut feeling, but I have to trust my gut, right?” 

There’s some muffled clicking from the other end before Veronica speaks. “Well, your gut instinct just got you and two guests of your choice free tickets to William Denbrough’s book tour,” she says, and Bev can hear the grin in her voice. “I’ve emailed you the details- I’ll see you in a month or so, Miss Marsh. It was a pleasure doing business with you.” 

From there, it’s a waiting game. Bev buys a copy of  _ The Attic Room _ , and Veronica was right, because the ending is absolute garbage- disjointed and unsatisfying, disconnected in a way that Beverly is intimately familiar with. It feels like  _ them _ , like Stan and Eddie and Richie and her, disconnected, searching for something to make them whole. She makes Eddie read it, and when Stan gets back from his honeymoon, she calls him and tells him to read it as well. 

“This is ridiculous,” he tells her over the phone, the day before the book tour. “You know this is ridiculous, right? This is like- like shitty ripoff versions of us having some adventure with a half-baked finale.” 

“I  _ know _ ,” Bev says, tucking the phone between her shoulder and ear. “I can’t believe Veronica let him get away with this.” 

Stan snorts. “I can’t believe it was a  _ bestseller.  _ I mean, really, Bill used to be such a good storyteller, I can’t believe he-” 

There’s a crash as Bev drops her coffee mug, porcelain shattering on the ground as Stan’s words die on his tongue. “Stan,” Bev whispers, because her mind is reeling, because- 

Big Bill. Bill, with his kind eyes, his soft smile, a face marred by grief and anger far too often.  _ Why was he angry? _ Bev thinks.  _ What was he grieving?  _

“Stan,” she repeats. “Stan, do you-” 

“No,” he replies, and all the air in Bev’s body leaves her in one big rush. “Not- not quite. Almost.” 

There’s a long pause where neither of us talk, and Bev just stares at the shards of porcelain on the ground, coffee spilling across the floor. Her brain is going too fast for her to keep up, thoughts racing, images flickering like an old movie reel.  _ riding double on a bike _ . Stan remembered something.  _ a hand on her waist- but not like her father, or anyone else. comforting. warm.  _ Her coffee is going to stain the rug if she doesn’t get up and move it.  _ he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts. _

“Bev?” 

Richie’s voice shocks her out of her stupor, and she flinches, hand tightening around the phone. “Stan?” She asks, holding up a finger to Richie. “Do you think you can make it to New York by three p.m tomorrow?” 

There’s a muffled conversation on the other end, and Bev can hear Patty’s voice. “Yeah,” Stan says eventually. “Yeah, Bevvie, I’ll be there.” 

“I love you,” she tells him, rising to her feet. “Stan, you know I love you, right? We’ll get through this together.”

She can hear the grin in Stan’s voice when he replies. “Of course we will,” he says dryly. “You and I were the only ones who ever had any sense, Bev.” 

“Mean,” she chides, but she’s smiling. 

“I never claimed to be nice,” Stan sniffs. “Love you, Bev. See you real soon, okay?” 

“See you,” she says, and then she hangs up. Richie’s still staring at her, and Eddie’s bustling into the room with a roll of paper towels in his hands, eyebrow raised at her. Bev crouches down to start gathering up bits of porcelain off the ground. Eddie leans down to help her, silently mopping up the coffee as she picks the shards up. 

“What the fuck,” Richie says. “Is no one going to say anything? Have you been possessed by Jane and Carrie, and now you’re just having a conversation telepathically to make me feel excluded? Why are we not saying anything?” 

“Stan’s coming up tomorrow morning for the book thing,” Bev tells him. She’s got her hands full of shards of white, and a memory tugs at the edge of her mind, the same one that haunts her every night- red on white porcelain. Richie blinks down at her, and Eddie rocks onto his heels. “He- he remembered something, about the author.” 

“It could have been a fluke,” Eddie says, but he sounds like he’s trying not to get his  _ own _ hopes up more than anything. 

Richie crouches down, cups his hands, takes the shards of coffee mug from Bev. “Yeah,” he says, hands rough against her hands. “But I think we have to believe that it’s not.” 

It ends up being Eddie, Stan, and Bev that go to the meet-the-author. They get Stan from the airport, and Eddie drives them there in his stupidly fancy car, cursing up a storm the entire way. “You live in  _ New York _ ,” Stan says, disbelieving. “Why do you  _ drive? _ ” 

“Taxis are germ-infested death traps,” Bev and Eddie chorus as one, and Eddie shoots her a dirty look. “I don’t see you complaining when you get free rides places,” he grumbles at her, and she hides her grin against Stan’s shoulder. 

They link up when they get there, losers in a chain, and Bev waves when she sees Veronica. Veronica grins, shark-like, straightening her blue blazer. It’s a frankly impressive throng of people, and they find seats near the front (but not too near, because it’d be just their luck if Bill saw them and fucked up his whole event). 

“Eddie,” Stan says. “You’re jiggling your leg.” 

“Fuck you,” Eddie retorts, but it’s lacking any sort of bite at all and his leg falls still. “This is a stress inducing situation. I could have a heart attack, Stan.” 

Bev puts her hand on his shoulder, gentle, calming. Then she channels Richie, and says, “Bullshit, Eds, you eat red meat once a week and are practically religious about your cholesterol levels.” 

Eddie pulls a face and is about to reply when the rest of the crowd erupts into applause, and Stan mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like  _ thank god _ . Beverly turns her head towards the little stage, the table set up there, piled with copies of  _ The Black Rapids _ . There’s a man walking across the stage, brown-haired and friendly-eyed, wearing a flannel button down and smiling with dimples, and Bev’s heart stills in her chest. 

Eddie is shaking like a leaf, and Stan is perfectly still, and Bev isn’t entirely sure if she’s trembling or not. It feels like she should be, with the force of what’s hitting her, the overwhelming feeling of  _ warmth  _ and  _ love _ and  _ safety _ . It’s- it’s Bill, Big Bill, Stuttering Bill Denbrough who was her first kiss and the first boy to treat her like she belonged, like there was nothing wrong with her. Bill, who lead them so fearlessly into battle, and Bev has a headache pounding against her temples at the thought.  _ No _ , she thinks, pushing back against it.  _ Fucking tell me! _

Bill’s eyes scan the crowd, and he sees her, his jaw going slack. His gaze skips to Eddie, to Stan, and he has to brace himself against the table. Guilt washes through Beverly, cutting down to the bone, and she wants nothing more than to go and steady him, put a hand on his ribs like Stan is doing for her, clutch his fingers like she is with Eddie. He’s all alone up there, and that’s wrong enough, because- because  _ Losers stick together _ , and Bill’s never done well on his own. 

But he’s not alone, Bev realizes, because Veronica Sawyer’s got one hand on his waist and is leading him offstage, handing him off to someone else from her team before stalking back to the desk. “I’m sorry,” she says sharply, and it rings out just as clearly as the click of her heels. “Mr. Denbrough needs a moment- if you’d all kindly wait in your seats, we’ll have an update within the next five minutes,” and the tone of her voice leaves no room for argument. 

Bev staggers to her feet. “She told us to stay sitting,” someone says, but Bev ignores them, dragging Eddie and Stan with her to where Veronica’s waiting. 

“You weren’t kidding,” she says, waving them through. “Your boy’s a mess.” 

Eddie hits him first. Bev loves Bill, but she hasn’t seen Eddie frantic like this since he and Richie fell back into each other. They’re clinging to each other, the fabric of their shirts crumpling from the force of the hug, and Bev throws herself at them with abandon, tugging Stan in with her. 

“What the fuck,” Bill says. He’s clammy, pale, looking at all of them like they’re not real. “What the fuck,” he repeats, and then: “ _ Georgie _ .” 

The single word rocks through them all, and Bev can’t understand why, and then Bill Denbrough throws up on her shoes. 

**2007**

They tell it like it’s funny, later.  _ First time I saw him in sixteen years and he ruined my favorite shoes _ . Four became five. Bev’s told the story to every girlfriend Bill’s ever introduced to her, mostly because Bill’s started to get a long-suffering look every time she does it. He keeps introducing them to her, though. 

They don’t talk about the gut-wrenching fear. They can’t, because every time they do, someone pukes or passing out, and after Richie tried and knocked his head against Carrie and Sue’s marble countertop they haven’t risked it.  _ Cults _ , some of them argue.  _ Aliens. Magic.  _ Bill can’t think about his younger brother without it happening. 

Even Carrie, Danny, and Jane haven’t been able to pry the secrets out of their minds, even though they’ve tried. Carrie and Jane had gotten out of it with nosebleeds and headaches, but it had made Danny  _ sick _ , sick in a way that had terrified them all.  _ Overlook _ , he had rasped.  _ Redrum _ .  _ Murder. Here’s Johnny! _

That had been the beginning of the end for the two of them.  _ Redrum, redrum. _ It’s not that Bev doesn’t love him- she does, and she knows that he loves her, and sometimes she misses him like an ache. Misses him like she misses the gaps in her memory, cavernous, wanting. They email, and on occasion they call, and they even visit now that he’s not in the city. New Hampshire has been good to him, rounded down his edges. He sends her cheery little postcards from his nowhere town, and Bev has put every one up on her wall. 

He always signs them with  _ Love, Danny _ . She signs hers with  _ Yours _ , _ Bev _ , even though it’s not true anymore. 

It’s hard to be with someone when you shine. Bev’s had it explained to her over and over again, by Sue, by Mike, by Carrie and Jane, all in bouts of concerned pity after she and Danny broke up. “It’s hard, especially when they shine too,” Mike had explained. “El and Will, they’re close, but they have trouble- their shine clashes. It’s like two fireworks going off next to each other.” 

“Like firing a gun into another gun?” She had asked, and Mike had grimaced.

“You know that’s a bad analogy, but yeah, like that.” 

Beverly understands that whatever’s in her head had brought back everything awful that happened to Dan Torrance as a kid rising back to the surface. She had nearly undone those precious boxes that keep him safe, and it’s hard to feel like you can be yourself around someone who has the power to undo you like that. Dan moved to New Hampshire, and they’re friends, and Bev can’t let herself feel guilty for it anymore. 

She has the rest of the Losers, five out of seven, a number she repeats to herself when things get rough.  _ One two three four five six seven, seven, lucky seven. Magic seven. _

Richie’s in LA, right now, auditioning for something, spending the time with Bill when he’s not working. Eddie’s in New York, and Stan is with him, trying to make plans for some sort of joint-holiday reunion thing. Beverly is in Houston, Texas, sweating through her blouse in the thick summer heat, desperately lost, trying to find her way to the building she’s supposed to be at. “Son of a bitch,” she curses under her breath, turning around again. 

She bumps right into someone, falling backwards, but strong hands catch her in a pose that’s excruciatingly close to being a dip. “Uh,” she says, looking up at the man who just dropped what appears to be several blueprints in order to catch her. “Thanks?” 

The man above her is looking at her in a way that’s… bizarre, honestly. Bev is aware that she’s pretty, fine-featured with firecracker red hair, but usually when men on the street look at her it makes her skin crawl. This is different, warm and welcoming, like being under a heat lamp. “You’re welcome,” the man says, righting her. There’s something familiar in the shape of his eyes, the soft line of his mouth, the color of his hair. He blinks, harshly, and then his face drops, and he’s scrambling for the papers. “Oh,  _ come on! _ ” 

Bev bends down to help gather them up, and between the two of them, they manage to stop any of the stray blueprints and plans from escaping. “Thanks,” he tells her, sheepish, and he’s kind of adorable. 

“Thank  _ you _ ,” Bev tells him, handing over the papers. “You saved my ass, seriously, I can’t imagine what concrete would have done to my poor skirt.” 

“It’d be a shame for such a nice skirt to get ruined,” the man says, and then he turns bright pink. “Wait, I mean- I didn’t- I’m-” 

“You’re fine,” Bev tells him, grinning. “Help me find the building I’m looking for and you’ll be more than fine in my books.” 

He grins back, still a little sheepish. “Sure thing,” he tells her. 

It turns out that he’s on his way to a meeting in the same big, multi-business building as her, so he walks her to the elevators and bids her good luck. “Not coming up?” Bev asks, and he shakes his head. 

“Can’t skip leg day,” he replies, jerking his head towards the stairs. “Maybe I’ll- maybe I’ll see you later?” 

“Maybe,” Bev agrees. “Good luck with your building pitch!” she manages, and then the doors slide shut, and she’s alone. 

She never asked the man for his name. She shrugs it off- maybe she’ll see him on her way out of the building, or maybe she’ll never see him again. The idea doesn’t quite sit right with her, but she can’t figure out why, and she has a presentation to do for  _ Marsh Fashions _ to get off the ground properly. Cute and charming strangers aside, she can’t focus on it right now.

Bill and Richie call her that evening to ask about her day, and when she tells them about getting lost, she can’t quite figure out what happened. “It was super hot,” she says, when Richie teases her for being forgetful. “There was a guy who helped me with directions, I think?”

By the time she goes to sleep, she can’t remember anything except of that same, sun-warmed feeling. She doesn’t know who made her feel it. 

_ January embers _ , she thinks, but she’s already falling asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like this chapter got away from me a bit but we're living life in the fast lane, lads. thank you so much to everyone who's commented, left kudos, and bookmarked this!! i'm so glad y'all are liking it and i hope you like this chapter too
> 
> [tumblr](https://lovecorpse.tumblr.com/) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/zackdrawsstuff)


	3. 2009 - 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You grew up without me,” Pennywise says, and it’s almost sad. 
> 
> “Sure fuckin' did,” Richie says, and then he throws a rock at It. “ROCK WAR, MOTHER FUCKER!” 
> 
> Promptly, everything goes to hell. 

**2009**

On April second, Richie falls off of a cliff.

He’s hiking with Stan and Bill and Danny in New Hampshire, a boys trip that Eddie, Bev, Sue, and Carrie had responded to with the promise of margaritas and a Girls-And-Eddie-Night. They’re half a pitcher in when Eddie’s phone starts ringing, and then Bill’s panicked yelling comes through and they all flip out, a little bit. Richie breaks his left leg and two of his ribs- apparently he had tripped and fell a good thirteen feet before hitting the ground. 

Eddie chews Stan and Bill out in person, and he yells at Danny over the phone until Danny starts faking static and hangs up on him. He’s white with anger at the sight of Richie with his full leg cast, to the point where he snaps the first time Richie tries to make a joke and then storms out of the room. 

“What did I  _ do _ ?” Richie asks, looking for all the world like a lost puppy. Bev loves Eddie, but times like this she wants to slam her head into a wall. “I just- it sucks, but I’m fine! I don’t understand why he’s freaking out!” 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Stan says, and he turns to Bev. She lifts her hands, and she and Stan go  _ rock paper scissors _ until her hand smacks down in a fist and he ends up with two fingers out and a scowl on his face. “Oh, fuck you.” 

“Dibs on Rich,” she replies, smiling as sweetly as she can. 

Stan stalks off in the vague direction of Eddie, and Bill’s still standing next to where Richie’s laid out on the couch. Bill looks vaguely hurt, frowning at her with his big puppy dog eyes. “I could help,” he says, and Bev levels a look at him. 

“William, honey,” she says. “I love you, but  _ really _ ?” 

Richie blinks. “Help with what?” he asks. 

Bev ignores him. “You can go see if Stan wants a hand with Eddie. He’s always liked you the best.” 

Richie frowns at that. “ _ Hey _ ,” he protests. “Eddie likes me the best!” 

“Oh my god,” Bill says, throwing his hands in the air. He walks out of the room like that, Richie frowning after him, confusion clear in his eyes. “This family is a nightmare,” Bill calls over his shoulder, and Bev bites back a laugh. 

“Rich, hon,” Bev says, and Rich squeezes his eyes shut. “ _ Richard. _ ”

“I  _ know _ ,” he hisses. “I know what I’m doing wrong. I know that I just have to-” he chokes out a laugh, and ugly, wet sound. “Step off the cliff,” he says, and Bev snorts, hand coming up to cover her mouth. 

“Oh, honey,” she says, and she sits on the edge of his hospital bed. 

“It’s just so fucking dumb, Bev,” Richie says, more sobbing than actual speech. “I- I just can’t make myself say it! Everyone knows, and no one cares about Carrie and Sue, and I just-” he cuts himself off and takes a deep, shuddering breath, reaching under his glasses to wipe at his eyes. “When I was little, it was about being gay.” 

His eyes dart to her, looking for any sign of negative reaction, but Bev just nods for him to continue. “It was… It was that I was gay, and dirty, and wrong, but then we met Carrie and Sue, and Veronica and Robin, and I realized that it wasn’t about that anymore.” His voice has dropped to a whisper, and he’s looking down at his lap, hands clenched into fists. “It was just that I was…  _ me. _ Nobody was gonna want me because I’m  _ me _ .” 

He’s the tallest of their friends, but he looks so  _ small _ , hunched in on himself and shoulders shaking. “I love you, Richie,” Bev tells him, in closer and tilting his head up. “I love you Richie Tozier, because you’re _ you _ . You are my best fucking friend and anyone would be lucky to have you, terrible jokes and all.” She pulls him in, wrapping her arms around him. “If you ask him, he’ll say yes,” she whispers, and Richie nods against her shoulder. 

“I know,” he replies. “I just- It’s a big step, Bev.” 

She pulls back from the hug and presses a kiss to his forehead. “I mean, you stepped off a cliff,” she jokes. “What’s bigger than that?” 

And the smile Richie gives her isn’t big, or particularly bright, but it’s  _ real _ . It’s there, and that’s what matters. “You’re an angel, Marsh.” 

“Nah,” she replies, grinning. “Just a regular old gal.” She runs her hand through his hair one last time, standing up. “You ready to face the music, buddy?” 

He pulls a face. “No.”

She pulls one back. “Too bad, Tozier. You’ve got this!”

She turns on her heel and stalks out the door, almost running smack into Eddie on her way out. he blinks, steadying her as she wobbles in her shoes. He looks her over, and then past her at Richie, before saying “You okay, Bev? I wasn’t- I didn’t interrupt anything, right?” 

“Jesus Christ,” she says in lieu of a real response, stepping past him. Bill gives her a  _ look _ as she steps out into the hallway, hip-checking Eddie further into Richie’s room as she goes. “Don’t look at me like that, Bill, if they don’t get their shit together I’m going to kill both of them.” 

Bill continues to look at her like that, mildly reproachful and completely dad-like. “They’re repressed, Beverly.” 

“So am I!” she replies, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. “So are you! So’s Stan! So are  _ all of our fucking friends _ , Bill! They’re not special for being repressed and vaguely traumatized.” 

Now, instead of reproachful and parental, he looks like he’s desperately trying not to laugh. “Alright, alright! You win!” 

“Good,” she says, kissing his cheek. “Stand guard. If either of them leave before they’ve sorted their shit out, use your dad voice at them.”

“I don’t have a dad voice,” he says, and then, in the Dad Voice, “wait, where will  _ you _ be, Bev?” 

“Coffee,” she replies, waving over her shoulder as she goes. “It’s been a Fucking Day.” 

Hospital coffee always bites, but it’s better than the aftertaste of margaritas and panic in the back of her throat. There’s a line, because of course there is, so she’s stuck standing there waiting just to get a styrofoam cup of black caffeinated sludge. Except- there’s a guy, a few people ahead of her in the line. He looks exhausted, and he has the type of shoulders Bev usually would call  _ delicious _ , but- there’s something about him. It’s like her brain is itching, trying to pull up the memory. 

“Holy shit, Leg Day!” she says out loud, and then she’s cutting in line and ignoring dirty looks to go tap on his arm.

“Hello?” He looks confused at first, and then his gaze goes back to that open-warm-welcoming expression that he was wearing the first time they met. “Oh, it’s you!”

“It’s me!” she agrees, beaming. “How’d your building pitch go?”

He blinks, his mouth stretching into a smile. “It went great, actually. How’d your meeting go?” 

“Great! I’m-” there’s still people giving her dirty looks, so she scrambles in her pockets for a pen. “Gimme your arm, Leg Day,” she says, and he holds it out without even questioning her. She scrawls her phone number down, alongside a  _ B _ and a heart. “Call me, okay? I have to go, but I wanna hear more about your buildings,” she says. 

It’s only when she’s walking out of the cafeteria that she realizes she never got his name. (Or her coffee.) 

**2011**

Richie and Eddie as a couple are great, because it means that Richie and Eddie no longer spend all of their time pining after each other from afar. It does, unfortunately, mean that Beverly and Bill are stuck in the Lonely Hearts Club together, surrounded by dating-or-married friends. 

“Are you going crazy, too?” Bill asks her over coffee. “Do you want to get married just so that we aren’t the only ones who aren’t?” 

She takes a mournful sip of her cinnamon latte. “I’m too good for you, Billiam.” 

“That’s not what you thought when we were twelve.” 

“You had more game as a twelve-year-old than you’ve had in the rest of your life combined, Bill.” 

He scowls at her, lifting his mug to his lips. “Wench.” 

She grins, prettily as she can. “Bitch.” 

He opens his mouth to reply, but Bev’s gaze focuses on the door- on the man walking through. “Oh my fucking god,” she says, and the memories hitting her aren’t quite sack-of-bricks-Loser heavy, but she still  _ forgot _ , which is weird. Bill’s twisting around in his seat to take a look as well. 

“Ooh, he’s cute,” he comments. “He an ex, or a future?”

“He  _ didn’t call me _ ,” Bev says, rising to her feet, ignoring Bill’s little _ oh shit _ as she crosses the coffee shop to shove her finger in Leg Day’s face. “You!”

“Me?” he says, all doe-eyed confusion. “Wait,  _ you _ !” 

“Me!” She agrees. “You never called!” 

“I never called,” he says, and his face is doing something that’s making Bev’s heart stutter in her chest, like she’s a teenage girl. She grabs him by the wrist and drags him over to her table with Bill, depositing him in a seat. “I didn’t- why didn’t I call you?” 

“You didn’t call  _ Beverly Marsh _ back? Are you crazy, or blind?” Bill asks, and Leg Day- Leg Day looks like he’s been slapped. 

“Beverly Marsh?” he asks, like he can’t quite believe his mouth is making those sounds. He’s staring at his hands, pallor spreading across his face. “You’re-  _ Bev _ ?” 

“What the fuck,” Bev says, blinking at him. “Did you not know I was a mildly successful designer, or is this some bullshit?” 

“Bev,” Bill says, in the Dad Voice. He turns back to Leg Day and offers a friendly grin. “I’m Bill,” he offers. “And you are…?” 

Leg Day is silent for a long moment, staring at them both, before he says: “Ben.” 

And  _ then _ the sack of bricks hits, and Bev staggers. Bill, thankfully, is sitting down, and Bev prays to all things holy that he doesn’t pull a Richie and upchuck everywhere, because she really likes this coffee shop. “ _ Ben? _ ” he asks, gesticulating wildly, and Ben nods, weirdly hollow. “B-b-but yu-you’re-”

“Skinny?” Ben asks, and he sounds tired, exhausted, and it hurts Bev’s heart. 

“Hot,” she corrects before she can help herself, and Bill stammers out an agreement.  _ That _ gets the hollow look to fade a little bit, and Bev lets herself collapse onto the arm of Bill’s chair. “Holy shit, Ben, you’re- you didn’t call me back!” 

“I didn’t call you back,” he says, and then he’s reaching forwards. “Bev, oh my  _ god _ , I didn’t call you back! You’re- I’m  _ so sorry _ ,” he manages, hands hovering uselessly. “How did I… Jesus, my  _ head _ hurts.” 

“It’s a common symptom,” Bill says, and Bev wrangles her phone out of her pocket. 

**losers club**

**the superior b:** RICHARd   
**the superior b: ** EDDIE!!!!   
**the superior b: ** stan you’re important too but you’re in atlanta

**ricardo: ** i was getting LAID beaverly   
**ricardo: ** this better be GOOD

**eds:** Don’t be gross, Rich.   
**eds: ** What is it, Beverly?

**the superior b: ** CODE 7   
**the superior b: ** BEN MOTHERFUCKING HANSCOM

Then she closes her phone and leaves them to deal with  _ that _ , reaching across the table and catching one of Ben’s hands in her own. The horrible nausea of memories is fading into the sharp ache of loneliness, of missing someone so much you feel like you’re without a limb. Ben looks like his world’s just been rocked down to his foundations, cracked open like an egg, so Beverly stands and tugs him to his feet. “You’re coming home with me,” she says. 

“Forwards,” Bill whispers, and Bev steps on his foot without looking. 

“I’m- okay?” Ben says, rising to his feet slowly. Jesus, he’s _ tall  _ now, Bev remembers looking down at him because she was the only one who had hit anything close to a growth spurt. 

“William will also be coming,” Bev continues, stepping on Bill’s foot preemptively. “Richard and Edward will also be joining us, and if I know him, Stan or his wife will be googling flights to New York. Also, why are you in New York?” 

“I- buildings,” Ben says. He seems like he’s having a hard time getting words out, poor thing. 

“Don’t worry,” Bill says, hooking his arm around Ben’s so that they’re flanking him. “She breaks out the full names when she’s processing her emotions.” 

Bev leans around Ben to smile at Bill again. “I will gut you like a fish, Denbrough,” she says calmly.

“You can try, Marsh!” 

Ben, who has been walking between them as they frog-march him towards Bev’s apartment, grins, albeit a little helplessly. “Is it weird that I missed you guys, even thought I couldn’t remember?” 

The words warm Bev all the way to her core, and she slides her hand down to lace her fingers through Ben’s. “Of course not,” she says primly. “We’re a delight.” 

Bill reaches down and takes Ben’s other hand. “We are a delight,” he allows, “but what Bev means is that we missed you.” 

“He’s right,” she concedes, grinning like a fool. “We did.” 

They hold hands in a chain,  _ one two three _ all the way back to her apartment. Bill complains when Beverly drags them to the stairs, but when she looks at him deadpan and says “but _ leg day _ , Bill!” Ben grins like it’s Christmas and squeezes her hand. There’s something pulling at the back of her mind, but she pushes it back and leads them up the stairs. 

“Fuck, everyone’s gonna be so excited,” Bill says, a little sweaty and more than a little out of breath by the time they reach the top of the stairs. “And everyone’s gonna get to meet you- you’ll love Veronica,” he says decisively, and Ben frowns. 

“We don’t have a Veronica,” he says, with that confused-puppy look that hasn’t changed in all this time. “Wait, we don’t have a Veronica, right? There was definitely no Veronica when I was in the Loser’s Club.” 

Bev laughs, unlocking her door. “Club’s gotten a lot bigger, honey,” she explains, opening the door. “Richard, are you in my apartment?” 

Richie doesn’t reply, but Eddie does call “Incoming!” from somewhere inside, so Bev steps aside and presses her back on the door as Richie barrels past her. 

“Well I’ll live and fucking be, Handsome Hanscom!” Richie crows from where he’s hanging off of Ben like a koala, grinning like a lunatic. “Talk about the elephant  _ not _ in the room, dude, you got hot!” 

The look on Ben’s face could cure cancer, Beverly thinks, watching as he adjusts his grip so he and Richie don’t go sprawling. “Rich,” he says, soft and gentle, a grin spreading across his face. “Richie fuckin’ Tozier,” he says, louder, and he spins the other man around, laughing. 

“It’s been a hot minute!” Richie cheers, letting go of Ben to put his feet back on the ground, clapping him on the back. “Come on, Eddie wants to see you, and  _ you _ , Miss Marsh!” He spins around to point at Bev, who bats her eyelashes at him. “Stanpat are going to get here tomorrow morning!” 

“Wonderful,” she tells him, grinning. 

They sit around her table and drink beers and catch up, and Ben is a warm spot at her side through the whole thing. She remembers the day in Texas, arid heat searing her down to her bones, two shooting stars knocking each other off course. She wonders why it wasn’t instant, like it’s been the other times, why she managed to leave and go to her meeting without a care in the world. 

“Penny for your thoughts, Bev?” he asks. It’s dark, and Richie and Eddie have long since fallen asleep on either side of Bill, who complained for about thirty seconds before falling asleep as well, head tilting back on Bev’s couch. 

Bev knocks her shoulder against Ben’s grinning. “Happy to have you back, Ben.” 

And she turns away to stand, but from the corner of her eye, she watches him give  _ her _ a look- like how Richie used to look at Eddie, how Stan watches Patty while she cooks, so tender that it nearly brings her to her knees. Bev thinks, maybe, if she turned around and kissed him right now, he would kiss her back, but…

But she can’t lose him like she lost Danny. There is something they need to fix, the Loser’s Club, and Bev can’t give into that instinct until they do, no matter how badly she wants to climb onto his lap and never let him go again. 

So she stands, and she starts gathering beer bottles and empty takeout cartons, and when Ben joins her, she smiles a small, private smile.  _ Later _ , she tells herself.  _ Not never, just- Later.  _

**2012**

“I need your help,” Danny says into the phone, and he sounds- he sounds bad, like he’s had a nightmare, like he’s reliving the events of his childhood. It’s been a while since he’s called her, and Bev clutches the phone to her ear. “There’s a little girl, Bev, she’s in danger. Abra is in danger, and I need you, you and- and Jane, or Carrie. I need people who shine, Bev, and I can’t do this on my own.” 

“Okay,” she says, desperate. “I love you, Danny.” 

“Meet me at the Hotel,” Dan replies, and he hangs up the phone.

Carrie doesn’t ask what’s happening, which is good, because Bev doesn’t know. They climb into the car in near-silence, both with only a backpack, and before they go, Richie leans down and offers the handle of his baseball bat. 

“Just in case,” he tells her. “You come back now, alright, Marsh? We’ve got unfinished business.” 

“Right,” Bev says, mouth set in a grim line. “Look after the others while I’m gone, just in case.” 

“Just in case,” Richie echoes, and Carrie starts the engine. 

The closer they get to the Overlook Hotel, the worse they both feel. Carrie’s knuckles tighten around the steering wheel, and Bev’s jaw is clenched so hard she thinks she might crack a tooth. “Feels like home,” Carrie says, grinning a little dementedly into the snowy night outside. 

“Yeah,” Bev agrees, grinning back. She doesn’t know how she knows it, but it  _ does _ feel like home, dark and crawling and awful. 

There are lights on inside the hotel, and Carrie’s eyes go dark and determined as she walks towards it. Her hand flies out, and the doors slam open on their own, snow and frigid air sweeping around them as they rush into the lobby. There is a woman with dark hair and a hat stalking across the room towards Danny, and her head snaps back to look at Bev and Carrie. “Oh, Danny, you brought me more friends,” she snarls. “They don’t shine quite right either, do they, Danny-boy?” 

“Who the fuck are you?” Bev asks, gripping the baseball bat tighter. 

“Rose,” she purrs. “I could give you time,” she continues, grinning with teeth that are a little too sharp. “Eat well, live long. What’s a few children when you’re immortal?” She asks, and Bev’s stomach roils with revulsion. 

“Go fuck yourself,” Carrie snarls, and the woman leers. 

“It’s a shame,” she says, voice like dark silk. “Because when you don’t eat well, you just aren’t as powerful as the people who do.” She tilts her head in consideration, looking them over. “Or as pretty, I suppose.” 

Danny has an axe in his hands, and he’s staring at Bev, eyes wide with fear. “Danny,” Bev says slowly, voice more even than she thinks it should be- this woman wants to kill her, she knows, this woman takes children who shine and breaks them apart for her own gain, and Bev is so fucking  _ angry _ . She’s so tired of people breaking little girls, little boys, trying to ruin them because they think no one is going to stop them. “This is the bitch that wanted to hurt Abra?” 

“Yes,” Danny breathes, hands tightening on the axe. “She killed a little boy, too, and others, before him.” 

She feels like she’s crawling out of her own skin, or maybe into it for the first time ever. Carrie is a pillar of malice at her side, and the lights above them flicker as her eyes focus on Rose. “Why don’t you try picking on someone your own size, you sociopathic cunt,” Bev snarls, and then she moves. 

The baseball bat slams into Rose’s ribs as the Overlook Hotel starts to shudder apart around them, Carrie’s powers flickering into their full strength. Bev shines, sure, but not like them- she can’t move things with her mind, or break into other people’s. But Beverly Marsh is thirty-six years old, does CrossFit three times a week, and has lived her life in fear that one day she’s going to have to fight for it ( _ again _ , her mind supplies). That, and there is a well of fear and rage and hatred dying to be tapped into, so when Rose staggers from the bat, Bev does not hesitate before hitting her again with all she’s got. 

A little girl scrambles into the room, eyes wide, curly hair frizzing around her face. “Uncle Danny,” she says, scared out of her mind. “Are they- is she?” 

Bev hits Rose in the face with the bat, and then Carrie speaks for the first time since the fight starts. “Go,” she says, voice hollow. “I’ll be right out.” 

“Carrie-?” Dan starts, one arm out protectively in front of Abra. 

“This place is evil,” Carrie says in that same, hollow voice. “I’m going to kill it.” 

Bev crosses the room in quick strides, reaching her hand out to Danny. “Let me take you home,” she says, and he looks down at Abra. Beverly follows his gaze, offering her hand to the little girl instead. “Let me take you home,” she repeats, and Abra reaches out and puts her hand in Bev’s. 

When Carrie walks out of the Overlook Hotel, she does not have Rose the Hat with her. There’s a splatter of blood across her cheek, and flames licking up the hotel behind her biting at the dark night sky like rows of yellow-tinted teeth, and Bev thinks,  _ just like the deadlights _ , and then she starts the car. 

“You’re scary,” Abra says quietly, looking at Carrie. She reaches forwards into the front seat and takes the older woman’s hand. “Thank you.” 

Carrie looks down at Abra and smiles, sad and exhausted. “I think we’re all a little scary, sometimes,” she says. She pauses, looking down at this girl who is the opposite of her- dark where Carrie is light, hopeful where Carrie has no hope left. Then she says, carefully, glancing at Dan- “do you want to meet my wife?” 

And Dan smiles, and Abra smiles, shaky but bright. “Yes,” she answers. “I think I’d like that.” 

**2015**

At Abra Stone-White’s first dance recital at her school in Brooklyn, they take up a whole row. Carrie and Sue; tentative mothers, Danny who stands up and cheers even as Abra glares embarrassed from the stage, Bev and Ben and Bill; all in a row,  _ one two three,  _ and Nancy and Jonathan; who bring a regular camera and a video camera.

They take her out for ice cream afterwards, where Richie and Eddie and Steve join them, all of them cramming into the biggest booth in the ice cream parlor. Bev ends up more than a little in Ben’s lap, but she’s okay with that, and she likes the way his cheeks darken whenever she looks at him.

“You’re gonna be a star,” Eddie declares, hunched over to watch Jonathan’s video of her. 

“She already is,” Sue corrects, tugging on one of Abra’s curls, pride etched in every line of her face. “She’s  _ our  _ little star, shining so bright.” 

Abra beams, and then rests her spoon on the end of her nose. Richie wipes his own spoon clean, licks it, and puts it on his own nose. “Look, I don’t even need magic powers to do it,” he says, and they all laugh when it falls off. 

_ Only one piece is missing, _ Bev’s mind whispers.  _ Why don’t you come home and find out what?  _

“You okay?” Danny asks, leaning over to nudge her. 

Bev smiles at him, and she doesn’t think about the deadlights, or the Overlook Hotel, or anything like that at all. “Yeah,” she says. “I am.” 

**2016**

When Mike Hanlon calls, Eddie crashes his car.

Bev, who is in the passenger seat, curses for nearly ten minutes straight until the EMT checking them over gives her a  _ look _ , which is when Beverly switches to cursing inside of her head. 

“So,” Eddie says, once they’ve been cleared to go. “Do you think Richie’s puked, yet?” 

It’s the type of thing Richie himself would say, deflective and too funny for Bev not to laugh. “I guess we’re going home,” she replies, when the fit of hysteria has passed. 

“I guess so,” Eddie says, and he doesn’t sound happy about it at all.

-

“I’m coming with,” Carrie snarls, and Bev snarls right back. 

“Not a chance in hell,” she snaps. “You have a  _ daughter _ , Carrie, and I’m not risking you for a problem I know I can fix on my own.” 

“Bev’s right,” Danny says, and Bev barely gets out an exasperated  _ thank you! _ before he’s continuing. “Which is why I’m going to go instead.” 

“Did you miss the part where I said we can do this ourselves?” she asks, and Danny lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. “You’re not even  _ that  _ psychic!” 

Another shrug. “I’d say send Jane or Will, but Jane’s with Mike in Spain and Will’s not as close to you as I am,” he points out. “I’m coming, Bev, like it or not. Losers don’t let Losers do this shit alone.” 

“There will be  _ seven  _ of us,” she stresses. “Richie’s bringing his baseball bat!” 

Sue raises her eyebrows. “Yes, because that’s so effective where your psychic friend is going to be useless,” she remarks, and Bev flips her off without looking. 

“I will remind everyone present that the baseball bat was  _ very useful  _ when we were at Danny’s murder-hotel,” she grumbles, but she knows it’s a losing battle.

-

In the end, there’s eight of them at the airport. Beverly, Ben, Bill, Richie, Eddie, Stan, Patty, and Danny. They get three rental cars, and pile into the Chinese place Mike gave them the address for all together. Derry makes Beverly feel too small for her body, like she’s thirteen years old and stealing cigarettes all over again. 

When Mike sees them all, his face lights up. It’s nearly enough to make Beverly cry, and they all converge on him, a tangled knot of group hug laughing and shouting. “Mikey,” she says, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “We’ve missed you.” 

His smile is a little rueful, but he hugs her tighter. “I missed you guys too,” he says. Then, turning to look at Patty and Dan- “and who are they?” 

Stan wraps his arms around Patty and beams. “This is my wife, Patty,” he says, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I’m a wife guy now.” 

“It’s so lovely to meet the last member of the Loser’s Club,” Patty says warmly, breaking away from Stan to wrap Mike up in a hug. 

“And this is Danny!” Bev introduces. “He’s, um…” 

“Bev’s psychic ex-boyfriend,” Richie supplies, frowning when Eddie elbows him. “What? He is!” 

“He is,” Bev admits. “He’s here to help us with our… problem.” 

The room seems to dim at that, but Mike pushes through it, smiling brightly and gesturing everyone to their seats, pulling up extras for Patty and Dan. Sitting around the table, laughing and drinking and stealing food from each other’s plates, all Bev can think is  _ this is how it was supposed to be.  _ Her blood sings with it, with the right-ness of it all, thinking about movie nights and picnics as kids, of standing in a circle, glass cutting through their palms. 

“To the Losers,” Bill toasts, holding up his beer. 

“To new friends,” Mike adds, smiling at Patty and Dan, raising his own glass. 

“To family,” Beverly says, and their glasses all meet in the middle. 

When the waitress comes with her basket of fortune cookies, no one really thinks about who ordered them until Danny goes very,  _ very _ still. “We should go,” he says, staring at the cookies, and Bev is about to ask what he’s talking about when one of them explodes. 

The thing that bursts out of it is something halfway between a bat and an eyeball, and it flies directly for Eddie’s face, who shrieks and smacks it away from him. Then the other fortune cookies start exploding, horrors crawling and flying towards them. Bev’s first thought when she sees them is  _ what the fuck _ , very quickly followed by  _ i should have let carrie come _ , and then:  _ wait, there’s a knife on the table _ . 

It’s a butter knife, sure, but violence is violence no matter how you cut it and the eye-bat thing goes down with a squeak when Bev drives the knife through it. “Fuck you,” she spits, and then she hears Patty yell  _ duck _ !

Bev drops, and Patty swings her chair over Bev’s head and into another one of the little monsters, eyes wide and breathing hard. Mike follows her lead, picking up his own chair and slamming it into the table, once, twice, three times before the waitress walks in. 

They all freeze in their various states of disarray- Bev on the ground, Eddie practically climbing Ben to get away from the monsters that are still twitching, Patty and Mike with their chairs in their hands. “Check, please,” Richie says, and the waitress gives a wide-eyed nod before running away. 

Mike’s shoulders slump, the chair falling from his hand. “I’m never going to be able to come back here, am I?” 

Bill claps his shoulder. “I wouldn’t want to if I were you, buddy.” 

-

“Your entire hometown is haunted,” Danny says in the car. He’s sitting in the back, Ben is driving, and Bev is shotgun, the rest in the other two cars as they drive to the inn they’re staying at. There’s a New Kids On The Block song playing on the radio, which adds an extra layer of feeling like she’s gone absolutely batshit to the whole situation, but Ben is tapping the steering wheel in time with the beat. 

“Like, really haunted,” Danny continues, like he’s not sure if they heard him. “The whole thing. It’s incredibly upsetting.” 

“You can say that again,” Bev says under her breath, pressing her spine flat against the car’s seat. “Do you think we can beat It?” 

Because she remembers, now: IT. The unnamable fear- her voice from the drain, bloody and sinister and awful. It feels the same way that the Overlook Hotel did, like it was going to swallow her alive if she stayed there too long, and she just  _ forgot _ about it. 

Danny is silent for a long moment, until Ben pulls into the parking lot and turns off the car. They sit there for a moment, Bev and the men she’s loved, and Danny looks down at his hands. 

“I think,” he says, wetting his lips, “that if we can beat It, that refusing to forget was a good first step.” 

Bev exhales. “Alright,” she says, undoing her seatbelt. “Let’s go make a plan, boys.” 

She goes, and they follow. 

-

Splitting up feels like the opposite of what they should do, but Mike insists. “You remembered each other, but not the fear,” he says, gesturing to Derry. “We can’t do this unless you know all of it.” 

So Bev is here, staring up at the building she lived in- the building she killed her father in -and trying to convince herself not to run away screaming. “This is a horrible idea,” she says out loud. 

“Yeah,” Danny replies, squeezing her hand. “Sure you don’t want me to come up with you?” 

She thinks about the locked boxes in his head, the axe he held at the hotel, the way he teaches Abra about her shine. “Nah,” she tells him, squeezing back. “You’re my getaway driver, alright?” Then she starts walking before she convinces herself to drag him into this place with her.

There are some things she has to do alone. 

Less than fifteen minutes later, she’s very much regretting not bringing Danny with her, because the old lady is a) naked and b) very much not really an old lady, which are traumatizing for very different reasons. She kicks down the door (a trick she learnt from Steve) and nearly falls through a hole in the floor; because the apartment building is crumbling around her now, ancient and broken. 

“Come back, Bevvie,” It croons. “Aren’t you still Daddy’s little girl?” 

She looks back, scowling. “No,” she snarls, and takes one step back before running and leaping across the hole in the hallway floor. She lands hard, but pushes herself up to her feet. 

_ “You never ever stop fighting,”  _ Nancy had told her once, drunk on wine and curled up on Bev’s couch.  _ “When you give up, you’re dead. The monsters, they have it easy- all they have to do is convince you to give up.”  _

“No,” Bev repeats, looking It in the face. “I’m Beverly fucking Marsh, and I’m not scared of you anymore.” 

Then she turns and runs, glad she wore sturdy shoes, scrambling down rotted wood stairs and bursting out of the building. “WE ARE LEAVING,” she shouts, and Danny doesn’t even question her, just runs alongside her until the building is several blocks behind them. 

“You get your artifact?” he asks, and Bev nods, gasping for breath. She holds up the postcard, and Danny looks it over, eyes softening. “Ben’s handwriting,” he says, and Bev turns red all the way to her ears. 

“Shut up,” she manages, and Danny grins at her. “Come on, let’s go.” 

-

Eddie comes down the stairs with a mouth full of blood and a hole in his cheek. “Bowers is in my room,” he says, and it spills over his lips and down onto his already filthy shirt. Ben and Danny go upstairs, and Bev tugs Eddie towards the bar and pulls out the first aid kit. “I hate this town,” Eddie says mournfully, blood spilling out of his mouth, and Bev pulls a face at him. 

“Why are you covered in goo,” she asks, and he shakes his head. “Alright, dumb question,” she acknowledges. “You get your artifact thingy?” 

He takes his inhaler out of his pocket and shakes it. He’s silent while she cleans and patches up his cheek to the best of her ability, but when she’s done, he talks. “It was like I was a little kid again,” he admits. “With my mom. But I… I think I scared It, Bev. I think I hurt it.” 

She thinks about the look on Its face when she said she wasn’t afraid of it. 

“Eddie,” she says slowly, “I think you might be on to something.” 

-

Bowers shows up again at the library. 

He goes after Mike, but Stan tackles him out of the way, and the two go sprawling. When Bowers comes out on top, Patty doesn’t hesitate- there’s a tomahawk that’s broken out of the glass display case. Patty’s dainty hands wrap around it, wedding ring glinting in the low light, and she lifts it over her head. 

“Get the fuck off of my husband,” she hisses, and then she slams it down against Henry’s skull with a sickening  _ crunch _ . 

They’re all still separated, and as Ben hauls Mike to his feet, all she can think about is how Bill went off on his own, how Danny had followed at her request, how she has no idea how they’re all going to get through this alive. 

“Fuck,” she says out loud, and all eyes turn to her. “Alright, fuck it, Neibolt,” she continues, and Stan’s mouth flattens into a grim line. 

“Patty isn’t coming down there,” he says, and Patty turns around and smacks his arm. 

Stan winces. “Like  _ hell _ I’m not!” Patty snaps, leaning down and prying the tomahawk out of Bower’s skull. There’s blood on it, but she doesn’t flinch as she sticks it through her belt. “You said it when we got married,” she reminds Stan. “We fight our battles together.” 

Stan turns to Bev, and she shrugs. “I already lost this fight with Danny, and I’m not even married to him,” she points out. “And Patty just saved your life, buddy. Besides, aren’t you tired of splitting up?” 

“ _ Thank _ you,” Patty says, patting her tomahawk. 

Bev puts her hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “You scare me,” she says, very earnestly. “I’m so glad we’re friends.” 

Patty grins, and laces her fingers through her husband’s. “I know,” she says, beaming. “Now let’s go.” 

-

“Richie said it best, last time we were here.”

Everyone turns to look at him, expectant, and his eyebrows furrow in frustration. Eddie squeezes his hand, the two men side-by side as they look up at the house, two Losers too many. “You’re lucky we’re not measuring dicks?” Richie asks, and Bev can’t help but snort. His brow furrows further.

In the silence, Bev’s hands reach out to either side of her. Ben’s hand is warm, and soft, and big enough that it wraps around hers with no problem. He hesitates slightly before he takes her hand, but he  _ does  _ it, and Bev thinks that might be a little bit of bravery all on it’s own. On the other side, Danny doesn’t hesitate- his face is drawn and pale, but according to Bill, there’s a child who’s been saved from It because of him. His hands are shaking, slightly, but it’s an old comfort that he provides, even now.

“Let’s kill this fucking clown?” Richie settles on eventually, and then he squeezes Eddie’s hand back, face hardening. Bev can see Nancy in the set of his brow, a determination that was in him the whole time, retaught by their group of survivors. “Let’s kill this fucking clown,” he repeats, firmer, and Bill opens the front door. 

Of course, it takes them less than ten minutes of being inside to get separated- a door slams shut between Patty and Stan, trapping half of them on one side and half on the other. Bev’s slamming on the door, trying to get it to open when she hears Ben scream. 

Her blood turns icy as she whips around to see Ben staggering to the ground, Danny and Mike trying to support him as he pulls his shirt up. Over the old scar, the one from when they were kids, wounds drag themselves open in the shape of an  _ H _ . It continues, and Ben can’t stop the howls of pain that rip from him as the bloody letters spell out  _ Home At Last _ . 

_ This motherfucker’s leaking Hamburger Helper! _ a thirteen-year-old Richie says in Bev’s head as she and Patty sprint over. Bev skids onto her knees, trying to figure out where to put her hands when she hears Danny, strangled: “Bev, the  _ mirror _ .” 

Her eyes snap up to the mirror on the wall- old and ornate, covered in a thick layer of grime. In the frame, she can see Pennywise holding the knife at Ben’s stomach, leering- but he isn’t alone. There’s two little girls, hand-in-hand, blue dresses stained with blood as they stare through the mirror. 

“Welcome home,” Pennywise says, and the girls lift their heads to speak in haunting unison- “Won’t you play with us, Danny?” 

Pennywise lifts the knife to Ben’s throat, and Bev is surrounded by screaming- she stops thinking, just reaches for the fencepost she brought with her and slams it into the mirror baseball style, shattering it to pieces. 

There are several realizations that snap through Bev, instantaneous, like a memory sinking into her mind. The first is that- all of this, the chaos and fear and helplessness -is intimately familiar. The second is that while this is not the Overlook Hotel, while Danny’s mind remains thoroughly under lock and key, Pennywise has always been good at prying the most awful things out of their brains. 

They aren’t alone here.

The thought is punctuated by a scream from the other room, and there’s a scramble of movement as they all scramble back into motion, slamming into the door, calling out names. Bev steps out of the way at Ben’s beckoning- the glimpse of a hand on her waist, no words needed, a type of communication she hadn’t known she was missing. The flimsy, rotten door splinters under an expertly placed kick, and Patty spills into the new room with her tomahawk held high. 

The sight of Patty slamming the bladed edge into a young-Stan’s spider-legged skull is going to give Bev, and possibly everyone else here, nightmares. There is a simultaneous sigh of not-quite-relief, limbs loosening as the immediate threat is eliminated. 

“Richie could have  _ died _ !” Bill shouts, and that’s when Bev sees Eddie in the corner, a look on his face she remembers from childhood. “Yuh-yuh- _ you _ almost let Rih-Rich  _ die _ , Eddie! He cuh-could have been killed!” He’s got Eddie pushed further against the wall, hands fisted in the collar of Eddie’s jacket as he shouts. 

“Ben,” Mike says softly, too softly, taking a step forwards. 

“I was scared,” Eddie says, voice barely more than a whimper. “I was- I’m not like you guys, Bill, I was scared, I was just scared.” There are tears welling in his eyes. “I don’t want Richie to die- I don’t want anyone to die, Big Bill,” he continues. “I was just scared.” 

“Stop fucking yelling at my boyfriend,” Richie says, finally up on his feet. He puts a hand on Bill’s shoulder, and it’s one of those instances where Bev’s forgotten how  _ big _ Richie is until his voice goes low and serious and he scowls like he’s scowling at Bill. “Making him feel worse is just going to give Pennywise what he wants.” 

Some of the fight goes out of Bill, and he lets go of Eddie’s shirt. Eddie’s in Richie’s arms in a heartbeat, face pressed against his chest, almost picking the bigger man up with the force of his hug. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and Bev turns away, seeking out Ben. 

He’s standing next to Dan, and he smiles at her, a little sadly. She smiles back, letting her eyes shift to Dan as she does. But before she can step over to them, Stan’s looking through a doorway, something haunted in his eyes. “Once more into the breach,” he whispers, and Patty hooks her hand into his before turning to look at the rest of him. 

“Baby chain,” she says, holding her hand out, and Mike takes it before offering his hand to Bill. They end up in a line; Stan-Patty-Mike-Bill-Eddie-Richie-Ben-Bev-Danny, all connected, unified. “Let’s get this shit done, kids.” 

-

When the thing in the water grabs her, shrieking “IT’S TIME TO SINK,” the first thing Bev thinks is honest-to-god,  _ shit, eddie’s gonna lose his mind about the greywater.  _

Dan and Ben pull her back up to the surface, something in the old woman twisting under Dan’s gaze and her rotting face buckling under Ben’s boot as they grab her around the shoulder and waist, helping swim her back up to the surface. The others help pull her out of the greywater onto the little island of garbage, pulling Dan and Ben up after her.

For a moment, they all lie there, soaked to the bone and exhausted from fighting a weird old-clown-lady underwater. Then, Bev says, “Eddie, how many infections am I gonna get from this?” 

“All of them,” Eddie manages, hoarsely, but there’s a laugh in his tone. “Bev, I’m sorry to tell you that all three of you are just- you’re just gonna get all the infections.” He pauses, making a face. “Did you swallow any?” 

And Bev thinks,  _ maybe this is what being brave feels like. _ And Bev thinks,  _ if I am going to die here I might as well go out the way I came in _ . 

She pushes herself up. “Remember how Bowers used to call me a slut?” 

Richie waves a hand. “Bev, honey, everyone called you a slut.” Bill elbows him, and Bev laughs, throwing her head back. It’s hard to be afraid, even if her heart is still hammering in her chest and there are goosebumps scattered across her skin. 

“Cool,” she says. “Well, I guess there’s no time like the present to prove him right.” She turns to Ben, and points at him. “I’m really sorry if I did swallow any greywater,” she says sincerely, and then she leans forward and kisses him square on the mouth. 

When she pulls away, he’s wide-eyed and a little breathless. “Uh,” he says. “I don’t think you did.” 

“Right,” Bev says. “I’m gonna get Danny to double check.” 

She’s watching Ben as she says it, and his brow furrows as he glances to Danny, and then smooths out as he looks back. “Yeah,” he says eventually, and a weight in Bev’s chest lifts. “I think you should.” 

Danny’s grinning at her, despite everything, and says, “You know this doesn’t make you a slut, right?” 

And she grins back. “Shut the fuck up, Torrance.” 

“Straight people,” Richie says sarcastically, and this time it’s Eddie who elbows him. Patty shakes her head, smiling.

“No, no, he has a point,” she says, and then they all laugh, breathless and hopeful and ready. “But as the other girl, here, can I just say: fucking  _ get _ it, Bevvy.” 

This sets off a round of cat-calls and wolf-whistles, and Ben’s cheeks are bright pink and Danny is still smiling and Bev thinks, that she has never felt less afraid in her entire life. 

-

In another world, there is a ritual, and there are only six members of the Loser’s Club present. In another world, they leave with only five remaining, stained with grief and trauma and holes that will never quite be filled. 

In this world, they go in nine strong.

In this world, they never quite forgot what it meant to be loved. 

“You’ve grown up,” Pennywise says, and he’s giant, now. His body is spider-like, limbs ending in claws, nothing human about the matter making him up. He is not the only horror in this room- Bev recognizes the form of Rose the Hat, of the little girls, and there is yet another naked old lady, which has to be some sort of record for the amount of horrible old-lady ghouls dealt with in a single day. “You grew up without me,” Pennywise says, and it’s almost sad. 

“Sure fuckin' did,” Richie says, and then he throws a rock at It. “ROCK WAR, MOTHER  _ FUCKER _ !” 

Promptly, everything goes to hell. 

Bev loses track of Ben and Danny and trips in an outcropping of rock, stuck in the all-too-familiar girl’s bathroom, graffiti scribbled on the walls: horrible things about her, about her friends, written to upset and frighten her. It makes her mad, and she starts kicking at the door, bracing her fingers over the edge of the stall. 

An axe slams into the door, and she stops kicking, scrambling backwards with a scream. This isn’t her fear, she realizes, it’s Danny’s, a nightmare torn from both of them, some sort of hybrid. “HERE’S JOHNNY,” the man with the axe says between hits, and then, in her father’s voice,  _ “ARE YOU STILL MY LITTLE GIRL, BEVVY?” _

The axe slams through the door, and Bev lunges for it, hands wrapping around the handle and pulling it away. “GET FUCKED,” she shouts, and she slams the axe back through the door. The man on the other side stumbles away, taking the axe with him, blood splattering against Bev’s face. 

Too much blood. It starts slow, but rapidly turns in to a flood, a torrent, splashing up her calves. Hysterically, she thinks she must have a fear of drowning, because it’s up to her neck, her chin, and as she pushes towards the remains of the door. 

“BEN!” she shouts, and she hears something muffled in return as she falls into the darkness. “DANNY!” 

“ _ My heart burns there too _ ,” Ben yells in response, still muffled.

There is something holding her in place, no longer covered in blood but simply in the darkness, keeping her away from the people she loves. This is the most insidious part of IT, she knows, is this feeling of isolation, of loneliness. 

Bev remembers leaving. She remembers beginning, alone, the one girl in the group, alone under her father’s thumb, motherless, friendless before that one summer. Beverly Marsh knows how it is to be alone; knows that each and every Loser has felt this, intimately, even the ones not from Derry. They’re anomalies in the world, freaks and losers and loners, born into a place that tells them  _ you do not belong _ . 

It’s that feeling that overwhelms Bev now, in this darkness, trying to find Ben, Danny, anyone. The feeling of not belonging, of being so alone that it hurts, cutting away at you day by day. 

And then she remembers: a Friday night, 1995, in a dingy community center at a group therapy session. She remembers a young woman with a wry voice and a cutting sense of humor, blonde hair and a sense of softness around her. She remembers thinking, clearly; that  _ like calls to like _ . 

And one by one, they came spilling into her life. Carrie and Sue, Nancy and Jonathan and Steve, Mike and Eleven and Will and Dustin and Lucas and Max, Veronica and Robin, Danny and little Abra, and Patty who loves Stan like a wildfire. One by one, they brought her friends with them, knitting themselves into something unstoppable, pulling tight at the seams, a bond that goes deeper than blood. A herd, she thinks, or a pack. Maybe even just a family. 

“I’m not fucking scared of you,” Bev says out loud, hands curling into fists, “ _ and you can’t take them away from me!”  _

The darkness shatters, and she goes tumbling down, like Alice in the rabbit hole, until she lands hard in a pile of limbs on the stone of that chamber. 

“Sound off,” she gasps out. 

“Not dead,” Danny says, followed by, “please get off of me.” 

“Also not dead,” Ben adds, helping her off of Danny. He is, inexplicably, covered in dirt. “Can you see the others?” 

She can, Bev realizes. They’re all in various states of disarray- Bill is now just as soaked as she is, albeit in water rather than blood, and Patty is sporting a cut below her eye that matches the one along Stan’s jaw. Richie and Eddie and clinging to each other, Richie with a baseball bat in his free hand and Eddie with a rock in his. Mike looks brave, standing alone, something fierce and defiant in his face. 

“You wanna play truth or dare?” Richie shouts, his hand still in Eddie’s. “Here’s the truth, bitch: you’re nothing but a fucking  _ mimic _ .” 

And IT reels back from Richie like it’s been struck, and it sets off the rest of them, shouting and hollering insults up. The creatures from Danny’s childhood are still there, but they are shouted down alongside Pennywise as the seven of them move forwards, Patty and Danny close behind. 

Seven voices, shouting:  _ clown, bully, mimic, nothing, nothing, NOTHING _ .

Seven hands, closing around a heart. Two more at their backs, watching, knowing that with everything they have done, this is not their fight. 

One voice: the voice that started everything, a boy grieving, a man still a little lost. “This is for Georgie, you son of a bitch,” Bill says, and all of their hands close over the heart and crush it into nothingness. 

For a moment, there is a stillness, a finality. Then the walls rumble, and Mike tilts his head back slowly, looking up at the roof of the cistern. “All in favor of running?” 

There is a quick chorus of  _ aye’s _ before they’re running, a mad dash back out of the cave, up the well, out of Neibolt. Bev feels like a little kid as they spill out onto the street, rickety old house collapsing behind them. “GOOD RIDDANCE,” Eddie screams, and Bev joins in, nine adults yelling at an empty lot between boughts of relieved laughter. 

In another world, the quarry is somber, silent, mourning the death of one of their own. 

This is not that world. 

They’re loud all the way down, someone finding a non-broken phone to call Carrie, spreading the word: _we’ve won._ _the losers are coming home_. There is shouting and crying and laughing, splash-wars and chicken fights and various scoldings from Eddie about the dirty water. Ben laughs all the way through Bev’s half-hearted attempt to drown him, dragging her under the water to kiss her. 

When she comes back up, Danny wraps his arms around her waist, smiles shyly at Ben over her shoulder. Eddie and Richie are shouting about something inconsequential as Patty perches on Stan’s shoulder and pushes Bill off of Mikes and into the water, laughing victoriously until her husband tickles her thighs and sends her careening down too. 

This isn’t home- there are people missing, and Bev won’t ever be able to think of Derry as her home. Not after everything. But these people, her family? They’re something pretty close. 

**2018**

** _epilogue_ **

Abra reads aloud from her book as Bev lazes on a beach chair, sunglasses over her eyes and an umbrella shading her pale, freckled skin from the sun. Abra’s book is some young-adult fantasy tale, about faeries and human girls who don’t know when to back down. There’s sword fighting and politics and fighting giant monster snakes, which is the type of thing Bev is slowly learning to love again. 

“I should get Will to teach you the rules for D&D,” Bev muses sleepily, and Abra laughs. 

“I already know ‘em, Auntie Bev,” Abra says proudly. “Will the Wise has  _ nothing _ on Abby Cadabra, most feared wizard in the whole planar system.” 

“Nerd,” Bev says, fondly. 

“Stop interrupting,” Richie grouses from the other side of Abra. His daughter, Maia, is sound asleep on his chest, one of her pudgy hands loosely curled around his finger as she snores gently. “C’mon, I wanna find out what happens to Jude and Cardan.” 

Bev sits up as Abra starts reading again, lifting her sunglasses and looking across the beach. Ben is entertaining Harley, one of Richie and Eddie’s other kids, and Quinn, their adopted ten-year-old, by throwing them repeatedly into the oncoming surf, their shrieks of laughter echoing across the beach. Eddie stands and watches, Maia’s twin sister June held safely in his arms as he supervises. 

Nancy and Steve are dozing on a beach towel, Jonathan reading his own book next to them. Will and Eleven are chatting at the resort’s bar, Mike helping Robin and Veronica set up more umbrellas by another set of beach chairs. Bill and Mike are in the water, Mike sitting hesitantly on a surfboard, and Patty is sitting in the shallows, hand resting on her heavily pregnant stomach. 

Her gaze drifts back to Ben, their beautiful daughter in his arms, both laughing. They aren’t related by blood, but Quinn has Bev’s laugh, Ben’s kindness, and Danny’s determination running through her already, curly brown hair and dark, freckled skin.

“You’re staring,” Danny whispers, careful not to interrupt Abra’s flow as he sits down on the beach chair with her. “I guess he is pretty handsome, though.”

Bev blows a raspberry at him. “He’s cute! He’s cute, and he’s with our daughter, I’m allowed to stare,” she says. “I literally signed an agreement saying I was allowed to stare for the rest of our lives, in sickness and in health.” 

“That’s not what being married is,” Dan quips, leaning down to press a kiss to her temple. “Ever think we’d be here?” 

Bev looks around at her family, her husbands and daughter, her friends. She looks at Carrie, laughing along at something Stan’s said, Sue’s arm around her shoulders. “Yeah,” she says warmly. “I think I had an inkling.” 

_ fin. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so! this is the end!
> 
> there's a lot i wanted to do with this fic that i don't think i quite managed- this was somewhat of an experiment with me, both in the way that it's a crossover and in how long the chapters were. i lost my passion for this fic for a while and this chapter suffered because of it, but i'm really proud of myself for finishing this fic.
> 
> i sincerely hope all of you who read this enjoyed reading it. if you want more of my work, you can look here on ao3, or you can follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zackwritesstuff) or [tumblr.](https://crossroadboy.tumblr.com/)
> 
> much love, and thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY, SO, NOTES
> 
> first off, a round of thank-yous:  
noah [@pinwhale](https://pinwhale.tumblr.com), thanks for stanning my crazy crossover ideas and enabling me writing this absolute monster of a fic, you absolute bastard. you're the best beta in the world and i love you.  
to the rest of the discord chat that's been encouraging this, thank you for _your_ enabling, and i hope you enjoy reading this now that i've actually edited it! you're my heroes, each and every one of you.  
finally, to [QueenWithABeeThrone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone) here on AO3, thank you for writing [walk me home in the dead of night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20951681?view_full_work=true)!! your fic is so good and that one in particular spawned this idea. 
> 
> this should be 3 chapters (1990-1999, 2000-2009, 2010-2016), and will probably total at around 30k once i'm done. i'm really hoping that i got all my timeline math right. i hope you enjoyed reading it, and if you want to scream with me about any of these fandoms but especially it, you can find my blog [here!](https://lovecorpse.tumblr.com)


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